When I Was Crazy

Sometimes I rush other people, but I hate to be rushed, myself. Pastor Bobby said a useful thing to the congregation before my baptism. He told us to slow down. All my life until then I had hurried. I could never do enough, fast enough. I was breathless with hurry and worry.

My two-and-a-half-year-old pointed his chubby finger at me before the baptism. With a solemn look straight in my eyes, he said: “Now yell really loud, and then work.” And so I did.

When my heart rate still hadn’t slowed down after Bobby dunked me backwards in the font, I realized that being Jewish and getting reborn as a Christian might not completely explain the state I was in. I hadn’t slept more than an hour or two a night for weeks. The last straw was finding that two-year-old on his knees by his bed one night, sobbing. I checked myself into a psych ward.

My seven-year-old cuddled with me the night I turned myself in. He told me if they arrested me, he would stay with me in jail. He was already a fierce protector. Now that role is tattooed on his arm in the form of a Hindu god.

They asked my name at the hospital, but I was in a joking mood in my relief at being in a safe place, away from where I could freak my children out, so I told the intake worker I was Jesus Number Six Million and One.

He didn’t get it.

I was referring to the six million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. Jews rarely mention the seven-plus million others the Nazis killed: Poles, Catholics, gypsies, people with disabilities, homosexuals. I never thought I was actually Jesus Christ. I just felt crucified.

It was the Reagan Recession, and my husband couldn’t find any construction work. After the bank foreclosed on our farm, he and I and our three small children spent nine months living with my mother-in-law, a sweet woman, but very devout. She had to go across the street to her mother’s tiny house with one of our kids at night so everyone would have a place to sleep.

Poverty can make you crazy. I don’t even know how anybody stays sane in this society if they have no money. Everything becomes impossible.

I came to the hospital to get myself down off the cross.

In a psych ward, the people around you matter as much as the medical staff, maybe more. I was lucky. I was in a good ward. There were vegetables; there were regulars; another Jesus and a John the Baptist; and one terrified and confused adolescent boy who had probably tried to kill himself. Satan came to visit, briefly, late one night, but mercifully was quarantined by the authorities and left the next morning.

I had been salting my food heavily, even every bite of apple. My body must have known something. In the hospital, they put me on a different salt, lithium. It took a while to work but saved my life in this crisis. I was lucky, again, to avoid its long-term use, because it can be toxic.

It was hard to focus since things seemed to be flashing, glittering, radiating significance. The other patients anchored my attention, mysterious separate worlds that they were.

One day in art therapy, my friend Jimmy used markers to color in a picture of a tiger, orange and black, in a green jungle. It was stunningly beautiful. His psychosis made the picture vibrate with meaning.

Everyone recognized the picture’s power. Jimmy put it up on his door. Someone stole it. Jimmy seemed indifferent but I was furious. The next therapy session, I colored in the same picture, using Jimmy’s colors and style as far as I could remember them, making as close a copy as I could, though it did not have the magic of Jimmy’s original. I labeled it at the bottom: After Jimmy. I taped it to my door until the nurses took it down.

In a good ward, people try to help one another by telling the truth about what they observe. It’s hard to get that from a nurse or doctor. They’re cagey about sharing what they see. The patients in a psych ward have no energy for anything but the truth, so that’s what people speak, if they speak at all. Even the weirdest bullshit people say is a form of truth, if you listen carefully. No one is pretending. Everyone is wrestling with an angel, or demon, or however they perceive the struggle, but in crisis it is a desperate struggle, the battle for your life, for your own mind, for any kind of control over what you say and do, so the terrible truths can stop helplessly spilling out of your mouth, keeping you on one side of the flood and everybody else on the other side.

One time, a nurse got angry at one of us for swearing. Some of the nurses were self-righteous Christians, not really what you want when you’re soul-naked and crazy and babbling truth. She yelled at this guy for a few minutes while he sat there in silence, and then she stormed out. Somebody remarked, “They’re crazier than we are.”

The hardest part for me was not being able to see my kids for weeks. My seven-year-old carefully colored in a picture of a bee and a flower and mailed it to me. I looked at it a lot. That was me, a busy bee.

I needed to take Bobby’s advice and slow down. Mania can kill you with lack of sleep and pressured heart rate. The recovering vegetables needed to speed up. One day a silent woman grabbed me by the arm and insisted, with vehement gestures, that I walk the hall with her.

The hall was a checkerboard of black and white tiles. My new friend placed her feet carefully on the pattern. When I started to go faster, she’d put her hand on my arm to slow me back down. That woman did more to help me heal than anybody else. She was trying to get back up to her normal speed. I was trying to get back down. We balanced each other.

I drew a picture of her wearing a nice dress instead of a baggy gown, with her hair in a neat bun instead of wild. I was trying to help her off her own cross, whatever it was, but whether it helped or hurt I will never know.

Where we hung out in the common room, the television was a real presence. Some of us heard the voice of God in it more than once. This was a truth-telling God with a loving sense of humor. It was a welcome voice.

Once one of us threw a tantrum, not at any of the patients or staff but perhaps at the world in general. Just after nurses led him away, the television said, “His anger is part of his charm.” The timing was perfect. Everybody laughed.

Nobody talked trivia. Nobody was interested in politics or sports or celebrity gossip.

Sitting with our backs against the hallway wall one night, I coaxed Jimmy into showing me where he had slashed his wrists. I compared my wrist to his. Inside the dark chocolate skin, his flesh was the same color as mine. We both stared at our wrists next to each other. It was comforting somehow.

The frightened teenager came in late one night. I was up. I was always up. He lingered in his doorway, looking around. He was glad to talk with somebody besides his father or his nurse. I told him he was lucky, he landed in a good ward. Some silent ones, some nice people, nobody especially scary. After that, he called me “Mrs. Cool.”

When someone called a patient, a phone in the hallway would ring. Nurses ignored it. Sometimes one of us would pick up and find the person the caller wanted. I got in the habit of answering it in a singsong lilt like a company switchboard operator: “Hell-o, Crazy People…”

One of the most embarrassing moments to remember, and there are many, is that I sang. Some people liked it; they listened in the hallway when I sang in my room, looking out the window into the park. But once I wanted to cheer this sad guy up, and I sang to him from the hallway, “The Longest Time” – a Billy Joel song. I meant it as an expression of cosmic all-embracing love, but people teased him about it, and his family heard he had a girlfriend. Actually from the way his sons talked to him about it, maybe that was a good thing. They seemed glad to have something to joke with him about.

The nurses found me amusing, until late one night I got frustrated with the nurse on duty, who was doing paperwork and refused to talk to me. I banged my wrist against the edge of her window. I wasn’t suicidal; I was just being a drama queen. Oh boy, did that get her attention. In a moment, two large male orderlies materialized on either side of me. They hustled me into my room and strapped me in my bed with leather restraints on my ankles and wrists. Then a nurse injected me with Thorazine, an anti-psychotic. She said it would knock me out for hours. I woke up 20 minutes later.

I found that I could wriggle around enough to sit up, leaning back on my arms. When a nurse came by, she reassured herself that I was done acting up, and removed the restraints. I asked her to show me the padded cell, as I thought that would be the next step if I misbehaved again. She laughed. There was no such thing. I was already in the locked ward. The restraints, and the Thorazine, were the worst consequences they had.

It was spring. I missed the farm. Early one morning, my mind stopped buzzing long enough that I could hear a blackbird sing in the park. That song rang as pure and clear as anything I had ever heard, all by itself in the silence.

I was beginning to come back down from the thrilling, dangerous ride I’d been on. I tried to stick to my principles. Be kind. Recycle. I collected the little things hospitals waste by the ton: medicine cups, the plastic tableware they give you when they can’t trust you with real knives and forks, paper products. I heard nurses tell each other to see me if they needed supplies, I had stacks.

Once I was sleeping again, the doctors decided I was ready for a day pass. My husband took me to a huge drugstore that would have overwhelmed me with sensation just weeks before. I bought a few things I needed while he waited outside. The moment I entered the store, one of my favorite songs started to play on the sound system: “Strange Days,” by John Lennon. The last notes of the song played just as I left. I felt like the universe was encouraging me.

The kids were waiting at my mother-in-law’s. Seeing them, holding them, was heaven.

When the hospital released me, finally, we moved north to the state where my parents lived, and where there were construction jobs. My mother found a wonderful old psychiatrist who saw me a few times, and then took me off lithium. He didn’t think I would get that crazy again, and I haven’t. I’m usually pretty happy with myself and my world.

Still, I’m as crazy as the next person. I get depressed, I get anxious, I have insomnia, I get angry about nothing, I over-react. The pandemic almost pushed me over the edge, but I turned to the things that always help me: friends, music, meditation, walks by the riverside, my husband, my kids.

All I want people to know is that sometimes life gets better. We are not things that get broken and can’t be fixed. We’re alive, and we can heal.

Another Jew for BDS

I was a nice Jewish girl. I went to synagogue on holy days and to Hebrew School three times a week through high school. I believed that another Holocaust could happen at any time, and that only Israel could save the Jewish people. I was a Zionist. Now I support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS), which seeks to pressure Israel economically into lifting its oppression of the Palestinians. Some BDS founders were anti-Semites. The movement has evolved as more Jews have joined it. What happened to change my mind? I spent a year in Israel.

What shocked me in Israel was the attitude of most Jewish Israelis toward Arabs. It was pretty much the same attitude racist white Americans have toward black people. Arabs were different, and lesser. They could be treated as second-class citizens, or isolated in impoverished bantustans like black South Africans under apartheid. 

After World War II, the Allied powers offered refuge to European Jews who survived the Holocaust in a country that was already home to the Palestinians. Some land was bought, some stolen. Arabs were understandably angry. Jews were understandably paranoid. This was a recipe for disaster for both peoples.

Now everyone in the Middle East is the walking wounded. Jews can reel off lists of atrocities committed by Arabs. Arabs can list as many atrocities committed by Jews. Both groups have bombed civilian targets, murdered innocents, and marginalized peacemakers. Both groups deny that they share blame for the ongoing slaughter.

Israel claims that it is surrounded by people who want to wipe it off the map, so the only possible response is to turn every Israeli into a soldier and arm the country to the teeth. America has supported this militarization with more than $3 billion in military aid per year. I do not believe this has increased security for anyone, Jewish or not. Every time you kill someone, you create new enemies out of all their friends and relatives. How can that make anyone safer?

A nation formed in response to oppression has become an oppressor. People who should appreciate the need for safe havens have denied all safety to Arabs in the lands they still occupy. People whose ancestors were forced to flee their homes are evicting others from theirs. People who should be tearing down walls have built them instead. The people who made the desert bloom are bulldozing ancient olive groves. This all makes me think of something a Jewish poet is supposed to have said a couple of thousand years ago: For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Mark 8:36-37)

I believe the Jewish people are in danger of losing the soul of our religion in return for gaining control of the land of Israel. It’s not a good trade-off. I don’t support BDS because I hate my people; I do it because I love them, and I want them to heal from the spirit-wounds of fear and hatred.

The war-mongers want us to look at one another and see Zionists or Arab zealots, patriots or terrorists. We must look past these imaginary classifications and see the reality: heart-broken human beings who want only to live and let live.

The Great American Con

Almost half of Americans have come to believe in an alternate universe. We’re trained from birth to be conned – by advertisers. The more fantasies we “buy,” the more stuff we buy. Our economy runs on the gullibility of American consumers.

So much blame to go around. The media who refuse to connect the dots. The media personalities who deliberately spread lies to confuse people, misdirect their legitimate anger, and arouse their fears. The advertisers who support such programming. The schools that are afraid to counter it.

I also blame our siloed, classist society, where academics only talk to academics, media only talk about rich people and ignore the non-rich, and intellectuals scorn to lower themselves by debating on right-wing talk shows or explaining things to the plebes.

Ignorance must be fought. It includes racism but goes far beyond racism. And the fog of delusion won’t decrease without a lot of hard and patient work, not just by the new administration, but by all of us.

Not Just Suffering

A friend’s suicide. Another’s illness. Loneliness, fear, anger. Those crazy Trumpers still trying to reverse the election. The Buddhists say life is suffering, and sometimes that’s all it seems to be. It hurts to be born, it hurts to die, and a lot of the stuff in between isn’t much fun either.

But look up. The sky is always changing and always beautiful. Every day begins and ends in beauty, the darkness hemmed with birdsong and magnificent color. Life is not only suffering. Where there is beauty, joy is possible too.

It helps to have trees or running water to look at, but people are also beautiful. Okay, not Mitch McConnell, but look at the people you love. Or just think of them, if you can’t be near them. Their beauty has nothing to do with the arrangement of features on their faces, or the shape of their bodies. They’re beautiful because of their kindness, their humor, their stubborn strength, the history you share, the things they know because of the suffering they have endured.

And now we’re missing them. Most Americans took a lot for granted before the pandemic hit. All of us are grieving for so much we never expected to lose. Who knew we would long for the crush of a crowd? Who knew we needed hugs so badly?

I believe that in the rubble of our old lives, our pre-COVID lives, some seeds are sprouting. America is changing. We ignored the epidemic of ignorance but now we can’t. It’s killing too many of us. White people ignored racism, but camera phones and Black Lives Matter made that impossible. We did nothing about income inequality, but now tens of millions are on the verge of homelessness and hunger. Many of us ignored politics altogether, as though it had nothing to do with our lives. Now we know better.

One thing we have learned from our communal suffering is how many people are helping us get through it. Maybe our appreciation for “essential workers” won’t last. Let’s hope it does: a little more respect can go a long way. That chain of people from field workers to truck drivers to grocery clerks who bring us our food is a beautiful thing. We could honor it by paying them all a living wage.

America was founded on slavery, theft, and genocide. Unfettered capitalism continues to make people behave badly. But democracy is another beautiful thing: we can share the wealth and take better care of one another if we choose to do so.

The only good thing about suffering is that it can teach people compassion. 2021 will show if America has learned that lesson.

Meanwhile, find something beautiful to look at or listen to. Find some way to help somebody. Remember that life is more than suffering, if there is love in it.

Tax the Rich

The USA is at a turning point. This country has been a disaster for the past four years. We just managed to fire the man who almost destroyed the rule of law, undermined education, greatly increased the flow of money from the poor to the rich, harmed the environment, alienated our allies, and encouraged racist, misogynist, xenophobic, and violent behavior. The virus is still raging here because of his indifference and incompetence.

Now scientists around the world are developing vaccines faster than anyone thought possible. And evidently the Trump administration had no real plans to get them to us.

These are thrilling and dangerous times. We have to change our way of living, fast, to survive. Wearing masks and isolating ourselves for a few months, this time like we mean it, won’t be impossible if households get adequate subsidies. The way many other countries have handled COVID has proved we can do it if we try. We know our hope lies in coordinated communal action. Once the worst of the pandemic has receded, we’ll need this knowledge to cope with global warming.

Tens of millions of Americans are hungry and homeless, or close to it. Hundreds of thousands of families grieving unnecessary deaths. Businesses gone, children behind in their education. Health care workers exhausted and burned out. It’s staggering how much mental and physical damage we must try to heal. We’re all the walking wounded.

The rich have been getting richer for a long time, but the trend has accelerated over the past 40 years. Where did all the billionaires’ money come from? Working people have been paid too little, and been charged too much. Now our communities have been sucked dry by this wicked scheme.

We have to take the money back to do what we, the people, need it to do. We need it to feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the sick, and teach the children. We need to clean up our nasty habits, train ourselves to stop mindlessly consuming as though earth’s resources were endless, and help rescue our species from climate change.

This is a new era. It’s time to tax the rich.

Snowstorm Economics

Do you know people who are frightened by socialism because they don’t really understand what it is? Try this analogy:

If you buy a snow shovel with your own money, that’s capitalism. If your neighbor plows your walk with their snowblower, that’s charity. If your town buys snow plows with your tax money, that’s socialism. No drama, no cause for fear, just same old same old. We decide what we want to spend public funds on, and what individuals have to buy for themselves.

18Dwight Collins, Pat Goller and 16 others3 CommentsLikeCommentShare

After Trump

When America defeated Trump, the whole world danced in the streets. We have faced fresh horror every day for four nightmarish years. All we got from the leader of the free world was lies, contempt, indifference to suffering, incitement to violence, and a quick descent into fascism. That’s almost over. Even though the plague Trump ignored rages more fiercely than ever, Americans deserve to celebrate for bringing him down.

So now what? Two more months of Trump doing as much harm as he can. Local stop-gap measures until national leadership can bring the virus to heel. Coming up on January 5th, there will be a crucial run-off election for two Georgia Senate seats. If Democrats lose even one of those seats, Senate leader Mitch McConnell will continue to block any help for increasingly desperate Americans and small businesses. McConnell could stop Biden from accomplishing much of anything at all.

But what has already changed is the mood. Trump made people despair. Now we feel like humanity might yet manage to survive. We know, however, that can only happen if we change the way we live, fast. Masks, distancing, and temporary shut-downs are part of our new way of life, maybe for a couple more years. The more basic change involves American consumerism.

The same capitalist system that produced Trump as its avatar has convinced us that we need new stuff all the time. That stuff requires energy to make and distribute. Burning fossil fuels to get that energy is broiling the whole planet on our watch. No alternate energy system can keep up with us if we don’t stop consuming at our present rate.

The current global economy assumes infinite growth, which is not health; it is cancer. Greed isn’t going anywhere. But basing our whole civilization on greed is killing us. We need to turn toward sharing instead of accumulating, toward healing instead of destroying, toward compassion instead of selfishness, toward making do with what we have instead of making more.

Such a turn depends on a change in our culture that no government can bring about by itself. Culture is formed by a billion choices made by individuals: what we watch, what we say, and what we buy. Already social media make clear that our attention – which can focus on only one thing at a time – is our most valuable asset. Let’s use this time of new hope to focus on things that nourish and heal us. Let’s make kindness fashionable.

Change isn’t up to Biden. It’s up to us.

Atheist’s Bible: Jonah

I was raised Jewish, so I learned the Old Testament. Much later, I studied the New Testament and became a Christian for a while. I tried and finally failed to believe in an afterlife and a Creator who cares about us individually. But various parts of the Bible have stuck with me.

The Bible is full of beautiful poetry, moving stories, and wise ideas. It’s also full of contradictions, nightmares, and ideas impossible to reconcile with science or human nature. It was written by many people over many years. Some insist that it’s all the Word of God, because the Bible says so. Those people act like the Bible belongs to them. But it has helped shape my world, so it belongs to me too.

Take, for example, the story of Jonah in the Old Testament. God told him to preach in the city of Ninevah. He didn’t want to, so he ran away on a ship. God sent a storm, the sailors figured out it was Jonah’s fault, and they threw Jonah into the sea as he instructed them. God sent the famous whale to rescue him from drowning. By the time he got vomited up on shore, he was ready to go preach in Ninevah.

Jonah told Ninevites that if they didn’t change their evil ways, God would destroy their city. He must have been pretty convincing. They changed. God let them off the hook. You’d think this would please Jonah, but he got angry with God for forgiving them. They had done wrong, and Jonah felt they should have been punished as God had threatened. He didn’t think they deserved to live. He stormed out of the city to sulk on a hillside under a little shelter he built. A gourd vine quickly grew up over the shelter, giving Jonah nice shade in which to pout.

But God wasn’t done teaching Jonah yet. He sent a worm to destroy the vine, leaving Jonah to broil in the Mediterranean sun. Knowing Jonah had anger issues, God asked him if he was mad about the vine dying. Jonah said yes. God pointed out that Jonah had not planted the vine, or helped it grow, yet he was upset it had been killed. So Jonah, God says, how do you think I feel about those 120,000 poor people in Ninevah who can’t even tell their right hand from their left, the people I created?

What I get from this story is that if we warn people to change their bad behavior, and they actually listen to the warnings and begin to do better, we might still not forgive them. We might still want them to suffer for what they did. When I see former Trump voters repent online, and liberals scorn them for their former politics, I think about Jonah. He’d be pissed at them too.

But these misguided former Trumpers are just as much children of God as any of us are, if any of us are. If they learn better, it’s cause for rejoicing, not resentment. We need to keep preaching. It might even work.

Good Guys, Inc.

Why can’t the good guys get our act together? So many people have been working hard on so many good things. But for 50 years, the progressive movement has been split into “special interests” by single-issue organizations. Environmentalists, social change activists, advocates for economic fairness, or for seniors, or children, or other species – all compete against one another for top billing on political agendas, media attention, and funding.

But if we’re going to build a world humans can survive in, we will need to do a wide spectrum of things. We have to stop fracking and using fossil fuels and nonbiodegradable plastic. We have to house the homeless and feed the hungry. We have to share the wealth to create economic justice. We have to educate our children, and protect our seniors. Most of us care about all these issues. Most nonprofit organizations only care about one.

If we support a single-issue group with our time or money, we should pressure it to work in coalition. This won’t be easy. Paid staff at these organizations have built their careers on “their” issue and will be reluctant to put that issue in context. For them, it’s about keeping such power as they have. In this way, we are poorly organized for survival.

That’s why it’s so important for progressives to take over the Democratic Party. That’s the only place where every issue is part of the agenda. The nonprofit sector in the US does a lot of good things, but it’s not only fractured internally, it’s on too small a scale to deal with huge national or international problems. And it is organized according to the whims of donors, i.e. people with money.

If we overcome all the cheating and manage to get Democrats in power again, poor Biden will have to deal with a mess on every level. No matter what we care about most, the Republicans under Trump (and before him too) have screwed it up. Everything we love is in danger.

We can’t keep fighting over which issue is most important. We have to make progress on all of them. Every single-issue organization has gathered data on that issue and knows how to educate people about it. If they work together – if we insist that they work together in order to win our continued support – they can each add a valuable piece to the puzzle of how to create a sustainable world.

Eventually this puzzle has to be worked out by all countries, not just the US. But if the good guys here manage to get it together, the US can once again offer some moral leadership to the rest of the world. This is not up to Biden, or any politician, my friends. It’s up to the American people.

An old friend

A friend of mine in her 80s has always been active in her community. She raised her own two kids and several others by herself in spite of never having any money to speak of. She’s a wonderful artist, an inspiring teacher, an ardent and articulate lefty, a doting grandmother. But her only surviving child and her grandchildren live far away.

Ten years ago, she was taking African dance classes and swimming across Walden Pond. Today, she can’t stand up straight. She isn’t sick but she doesn’t feel so good either. She still takes care of her old house and rents the extra rooms, so she’s eking out a living. But it’s getting hard for her to do simple things like grocery shopping.

When I spoke with her the other day, she was excited and happy. A purely accidental meeting led to a connection with local volunteers who are, she says simply, “helping each other.” This informal group started online in mid-March, when this country first began to take the pandemic seriously. Now they’re filling a few of the many needs that are not being met by either charitable organizations or government. For one thing, they’re helping her bring in the groceries.

The internet is an amazing tool. Maybe it’s the brain of our species, forming just in time. This network connects billions of us in ways never possible before. But a network of actual in-person humans is still the best thing of all.

My friend has been helping others throughout her long life. Sometimes it’s hard for such people to accept help when they need it. My friend, though, is a philosopher. She knows that kindness is its own reward. The folks who are helping her now are fortunate to do it. They are experiencing the warmth of real community.

May such kindness sustain us through these dark days: both giving, and receiving.

Who’s Taking Care of the Children?

For a period after World War II, American families could get by on one income. The GI Bill helped mostly white men go to college and buy homes, boosting them into the middle class. Though many women chafed at the sexist culture that would only allow them to be housewives, at least somebody was home with the children.

By the late 1970s, the cost of cars and college had risen so much that families began to need two incomes to reach the middle class. Feminist victories meant mothers could work outside the home. Women of color had been forced to do so all along. But who was left to take care of the children? The question was hardly asked in the US, and never answered.

In the 1980s, Reagan made wealth a sign of virtue. Preachers aided and abetted him, telling congregations that if they were good people, God would make them rich. If you had no money, it was a sign that you didn’t deserve to have any money. Americans were taught that poverty was the fault of poor people. Government could not be expected to help people who were not worthy of help.

Reagan attacked unions, helping corporations prevent workers from getting organized. As union membership fell, so did real wages. Costs rose but minimum income stayed the same. Rich feminists fought to break into top jobs but forgot about the poor women who had taken over their former duties, housework and child care.

Rich children got nannies. That’s why so many poor Black and immigrant women are pushing white babies around in fancy strollers. Their own children are back home taking care of one another, or staying with their elderly grandparents, or warehoused in somebody’s living room watching tv all day. Under Reagan, if poor women stayed home to care for their own children, they were shamed as “welfare queens,” even though government subsidies were and remain about half enough to live on.

The worst torture for a parent is to be unable to meet their children’s needs. A poor single mother can’t provide safe housing, nutritious food, medical care, or decent education for her kids. It’s a wonder they’re not all alcoholics or drug addicts or prostitutes. America doesn’t give them a lot of choices.

The gospel of wealth has created four decades of life getting harder for low-income American families. The rich are admired for their money, no matter how they got it. The poor get blamed for their poverty. Most internalize this public shaming, feel they must be stupid and lazy to be so poor, and learn to expect nothing from government. The rich assume their charity provides help when necessary, though private giving meets only a tiny fraction of the real need. Government food help gets cut by billions, and charity contributes millions. This does not compute.

And where is the help for poor children, whose parents are desperate, either home without resources or working without childcare? Who gets them online for school during the pandemic? Who makes sure they eat breakfast and lunch? Who arranges safe play dates so they can develop real relationships with other children? Who is taking care of them?

Nobody. That’s who.

Out of Balance

It’s the fall equinox today. Day and night are balanced. California and Oregon are burning. The earth is out of balance, and so is the United States.

The Awesome and Notorious RBG finally died, 45 days before the election. Trump will ram through some anti-abortion right-wing nutjob for the Supreme Court, and McConnell will rush them through the Senate confirmation.

Some people are still holding out hope that Susan Collins will vote no. They always hope she’ll do the right thing, and she never does.

There’s a reason people are almost as angry with establishment Democrats as with the completely corrupted and spineless GOP. Neither party has done much for working people in the last 40 years. Obamacare helped; but Obama was a negotiator, not a warrior. The Republicans stopped him cold two years in.

Meanwhile the rich have kept getting richer, and the rest of us have gotten poorer. The USA’s record concentration of wealth has been stolen from ordinary workers. We need a wealth tax to get it back.

Don’t expect Biden to give us what we need, if we’re lucky enough to have him win the election. The only way we’ll get health care, affordable housing, student debt forgiveness, a Green New Deal, and significant change to our policing and prison systems is if we insist on it. The American people must lead.

Make a sign. Write an email. Tweet your legislator. The real struggle starts after the election.

What happened in Portland?

A friend who watches live feeds for hours every night has been keeping me posted about the anti-racism protests in Portland, Oregon, which have been taking place daily since the police killing of George Floyd in late May. One thing has puzzled me the most. Why do the massive numbers of peaceful protesters not stop the few violent protesters from setting fires or throwing things at the police?

Getty image of Wall of Moms

Bad air from the horrific fires out West has helped cut down the numbers of protesters. The federal officers that Trump ordered into the city, who amped up the violence with their militaristic approach, have gone home. My question remains. So I’ve been trying to figure out who within the Movement has been doing what, and why.

My live-feed friend noticed that every midnight in Portland, there seemed to be a changing of the guard among protesters. The thousands of peaceful demonstrators would go home, and a new, smaller, and much more aggressive set of people would take over. It almost seemed like a shift change. The midnight-to-4am shift was when all the trouble happened. Fires were set. Objects were thrown. Who were these people?

I’ve gone to hundreds of protests over the years, on many related issues, including Black Lives Matter demonstrations from 2014 until COVID. The BLM protests were large, peaceful, and diverse. Even in the face of very scary-looking police, participants remained non-violent. At one protest a marcher started screaming at police — who were not being aggressive at that time — calling them “pigs” and “fascists.” I stood in front of the police line facing the protester and yelled back at him, saying most police are just working people like us, trying to protect their communities. This kind of thing used to happen a lot. If we on the left don’t want to all be painted with the same brush, we shouldn’t do that to other groups, even the police.

I am not disputing the fact that there are many racist police, or that systemic racism and the “thin blue line” have protected police guilty of extreme violence toward Black people. I am not questioning people’s right to be angry. I just wonder why the Movement against the prevailing culture of greed and violence would fail to act against violence within its own ranks.

Portland after midnight

Various fingers point to “antifa” (but we’re all anti-fascist); a branch of the venerable union Industrial Workers of the World called the Portland General Defense Committee; and out-of-state instigators, some possibly paid by the far right to incite violence. Whoever they are, they are a population distinct from the peaceful demonstrators who go home at midnight.

Then I learned about the St. Paul Principles — named after the city, not the saint. They evolved from the 2008 protests against the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. They’re a set of four statements laying out how the various arms of the Movement should relate to one another. They urge solidarity and tolerance of various forms of dissent. They forbid snitching on other activists. They insist any criticism should remain internal, so as not to give ammunition to Movement critics. They also tell activists committed to different tactics to “maintain a separation of time or space.”

The St. Paul Principles seem to have been widely agreed upon by organizers. I suspect most protesters never heard of them. But what they mean in practice is that organizers of non-violent demonstrations agree to let violent protest events happen in another “time or space” without any agreement on limits to those actions. The organizers of these very different approaches to dissent have agreed to co-exist, in the name of Movement solidarity.

It’s my belief that the Movement exists to challenge and change the prevailing culture of violence and greed — violence against the many, for the sake of the greed of a few. If we ourselves are violent, then who are we really? Do we represent change, or just more of the same?

Reparations

White Americans used to think slavery ended with the Civil War. But even when Black people were finally “freed,” they were turned loose with nothing. Their families had been broken up. Their traditions had been lost. Although they built this country with their forced labor, they had no land and no property with which to build their now supposedly free new lives.

Since banks wouldn’t lend to Black people and businesses wouldn’t hire them, they had no access to money. Capitalism only works if you have capital. Black people had no capital, so they had to take whatever jobs they could get — and given systemic racism, they wouldn’t be good jobs. They might not have had to live on a plantation any more, but that only meant they had to commute to lousy jobs that paid next to nothing.

So big surprise, a couple of hundred years go by and nothing has been done to make good all the harm done to Black people. When we talk about reparations, we can get bogged down in endless debate over who is actually Black or how many enslaved ancestors you have to prove to be eligible. We need to focus on how to fix the harm. First step is to admit it exists. Then we locate the people who are hurting.

Many Black people, though far from enough, are middle class, and some are very rich. If people are doing all right economically, the harm they presently suffer from racism is emotional and social, though their wealth is still far below what it should have been. Laws and money won’t fix that harm. It can only be healed through Black inner strength, helped along by individual acts of apology and understanding from white people.

But poor communities can be fixed with laws and money. We can subsidize affordable housing, renovate schools, hire more teachers and pay them better, provide free college and job training. We can take money from police budgets and invest in needed services instead of punishment. We can fix roads and infrastructure and give tax credits to small businesses. If America does these things, we might end up helping more white Americans than Black. But we will be addressing the harm we as a society have caused, and that we can do something about.

Elephants on Parade

Protesters at the 2004 RNC in NYC
Definitely not Elephants: Protesters in the streets of NYC, 2004

Journal from the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City

August 29, 2004, Sunday; around 6:30am.

Cool early morning of a hot day. It’s way too early to think about politics, or anything else for that matter, but 20 people are already waiting on the steps of the town hall.  At 7:00, a bus pulls up to take more than 50 of us to New York City for the big anti-Bush protest that’s supposed to start at noon today.

            I doze for the first part of the trip. After we make a fast food and bathroom stop, I wake up enough to talk with the nice man sitting next to me. Mark has a doctorate from Harvard in American Civilization.  He has been protesting the state of that civilization on and off since the early ‘70s.

            I ask Mark what upsets him most these days.  He says, “It’s a toss-up: pre-emptive war or incipient fascism.”

            Our conversation is interrupted by a balding, bearded young man whose boyfriend is traveling with him, wearing a skirt. I don’t care one way or the other about their sexuality but their communication style is awfully annoying. The young man shoves a song sheet at Mark as a pointed hint that we should be singing along with the folksinger and his little banjo in the aisle nearby, not talking.

            I resent being strong-armed into a hootenanny.

            Rumors fly up and down the aisle. People say no buses will be allowed into the city, and we’ll have to be dropped off at Shea Stadium in Queens and take the subway from there. Our bus driver, however, drives us all the way in.

            It’s a hot, humid, sunny day.  The march is dense and stretches for many city blocks. It’s impossible to see past the protesters immediately around you. Most people have homemade signs. The signs give a thousand reasons why people want Bush out.

            It feels like a big parade. The marchers are cheerful and excited.  All generations are represented but most of the crowd is young. The cops are out in their thousands.  They seem to be relaxed, not hostile.  People on the sidewalks wave the peace sign and shout their support.

            A random sampling of signs:

Send the Chicken-Hawks to Iraq (with a photo of Bush and Cheney)

Who Would Jesus Bomb?

Sick seniors, Sick children, Sick of Bush

Bush Lied, Thousands Died

The First Amendment is Not a Privilege, It’s a Right

Cure AIDS: Don’t Censor Science

November 3: Because Dumping Bush is Just the Beginning

Halliburton Thanks the GOP

I Support Our Troops and That’s Why I’m Here

Oppression Abroad, Oppression at Home: Stop the Bush War Machine.

End the War on Workers

(A man with a baby, with the baby’s photo on his sign): Save My Tush, Get Rid of Bush.

We Support Police, Fire and Teachers

            This last slogan makes an interesting contrast with the anti-Vietnam demonstrations of the ‘60s and ‘70s, when many protesters considered the police to be part of the “establishment” that created the war, and thus the enemy.  So many protesters called the police “pigs” that they might have helped turn that perception into fact.

            Today, protesters and police are not necessarily antagonists. The protesters see police as working people, with the same issues as the rest of us – health care, the looming deficit, education, the environment, the messes we’ve made in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The police are on the job and can’t express their political opinions.  There’s a lot of fellow feeling with the protesters though.  Police might have to protect the Republicans this week, but they don’t have to agree with them.

            I use my cell phone and run along the sidewalks to meet up with the Military Families Speak Out group, right in front of the march with the veterans of this and other wars.  The first member I speak with is Lorraine, whose brother is a Marine.  Their father died recently.  “What upset me was that they almost didn’t let him back for Dad’s funeral because things were getting too hectic in Iraq,” she says. “I guess getting rid of Saddam was a good thing, but I never supported this war.  Just the troops.”

            Sergeant Sherwood Baker was killed in Iraq this April.  His mother, father, and stepmother are all here at the march, carrying his likeness on posters with the date of his death.  They believe the war was unnecessary and no more of our troops should die for it.

            Larry is the father of two soldiers, Bryce and Branden, handsome young men whose photos are stapled to his sign.  He’s from Virginia and this is the first time he’s been to New York City. Larry’s enjoying protesting and sightseeing at the same time.

“I called my wife and said I was marching down Broadway and I hadn’t been arrested yet.”

            Around one-thirty, the front of the march reaches Union Square and settles down in the shade of the park trees.  Some native New Yorkers are sunbathing in the open spots, oblivious to the gathering masses of protesters.

            Mildred’s son has been in Iraq for six months. He’s an Army scout.  His unit has lost their lieutenant and one of her son’s good friends.  Two dead and two seriously wounded out of the 27 or 28 people in the platoon.

            Her son’s unit was terribly saddened by the deaths and injuries, Mildred says.  They had been told they’d be home by the end of the year. Now they’re being told by the end of February. “It doesn’t feel like much of a mission to him,” she says. But “he does what they’re ordered to do.”

            Mildred “thought the war was wrong from the beginning,” she says, but she’s only been protesting for the past six months or so. She told her son that joining the military was “something he should think about,” but felt it was his choice to make.

Mildred sends him macaroons.  She and Nancy, another military mom, trade tips on which cookies best survive the three-week trip to Iraq.  Nancy sends chocolate chip and homemade brownies, wrapped individually in plastic and then put in a tin so they don’t crumble.

            “Every aspect of this war has been mismanaged,” says Nancy.

            Some group, I think Bread Not Bombs, is handing out paper containers full of pasta salad, and free drinks.  I get plastic forks from a nearby deli.  People keep pouring into the square as the march winds down.

            The military families and veterans against the war are supposed to meet in Central Park around 4:00. Gilda, another military mom, and I get a ride there with Victor, a Vietnam vet.  He writes military histories.  He says he didn’t understand the Vietnam War until he got home and started reading Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. “They opened my eyes,” he says.

            Gilda has had a tough day. She came in from Washington DC.  She was setting her dog’s dishes inside and left her purse near them when her cab came.  She ran out with the rest of her stuff and didn’t miss the purse until they got to the bus and she couldn’t pay the cabdriver. The cab took her back home, and then to the train station since she thought the bus would be gone by then.

            There were three buses going to the demo at the station, however.  She doesn’t know who chartered them, but one of them got her here.  But they were late, and she started at the end of the march and had to run through the crowds to march at the head with the military families and vets.

            Gilda’s son Alex is leaving for Iraq on September 9.  He’s been trained in surveillance.  She hopes they spent so much on his training “that they won’t just throw him away.” [Note from years later: Tragically, Alex was killed on duty in Iraq.] 

            Victor, Gilda and I wander around the Great Lawn area of Central Park looking for our group.  The Lawn is surrounded by hundreds of police, though the line of cops keeps to the shady spots.  The protest could only get a legal permit for the march.  The city decided not to allow a rally in the park, saying it would be too hard on the grass.  As a result, many people took off after marching, and the several thousand who came to the park anyway are just milling around. 

Word was spread through the protest web sites that since there was no permit to gather at the Park, people should say they’re going there for a picnic.  The picnic is short on food baskets and long on banners and posters.  I heard the satirical group Billionaires for Bush were going to play some croquet on the Great Lawn, but we don’t see any sign of their thrift-store tuxes and ball gowns.

            Finally our cell phones bring us directions to the vets’ gathering place, a shady, stony little hill called Summit Rock.  One Vietnam vet is telling another about the Desert Storm troops: “They saw some bad stuff on the Highway of Death.”  He advises the other vet to brush up on his history if he wants to protest effectively.

            An Iraq War veteran speaks of the mental trauma troops suffer from the casualties they inflict as well as the ones they sustain.  “When we left Iraq last year,” he says, “they brought in a couple of psychologists, and got all the Marines not on duty, around 50 of us, in a room.  They gave us kind of a debrief.  You’re not gonna get a bunch of Marines in front of their buddies to say, Yeah, I’m upset.  They’re just doing it to say they did it [post-trauma counseling].  It was so stupid.  I just put my  head down. It’s just a formality.”

            Joe is a Vietnam vet from Philadelphia. He says “I’m filled with happiness and hope” at the recent founding of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW).  “Never again shall one generation of soldiers abandon another,” he vows.

            A big guy in green camo says “I served with Kerry.  Back him up! You’re doing the right thing!” A Marine in the small audience yells “Booyah!”

            Mike is one of the people who founded IVAW in Boston, just a month ago.  He says “Today I had five guys walk up out of the blue and say they want to be part of this.” He tells the crowd, “It’s most important to let people know that people who shed their blood and tears are saying, Bring them home now! No more VA closures, no more cutting veterans’ benefits! Never again!”

            Rob, another member of IVAW, says “During the war, my mom was with Military Families Speak Out. I’m fighting, my mom’s over there protesting.  We agreed to disagree about some things. Then I came home, and said I wished I could meet some other guys to talk to.  I saw Mike on the MFSO website. Then Mike calls me, says we’re going national.  We got to get our buddies home.”

            Tim’s from California. “Almost weekly, we’re seeing headlines: Marines dying.  We went live on MSNBC today.  Our ranks are growing tremendously. We’re gonna take this to the administration.”

            Bryan’s a Marine from New Palz, New York. “This war is wrong. We were all lied to. We need to defeat George Bush and kick him out of the White House.”

            David served in Iraq as part of the New York National Guard.  He came home to VA cuts. “Guys can’t support their families,” he says. “This war is perpetuating poverty.”

            Chris is a first lieutenant with the Army Reserve. “I knew this war was going to be unjust.  When you’ve outlived your usefulness, they’ll drop you like a hot potato…Thank you all for trying to set things right, so we can have the America we want it to be rather than a place just for the rich.”

            The mother of a soldier now in jail for desertion speaks, in Spanish, and her sister translates. “He isn’t being punished because he deserted, but because he denounced the war….It’s important to know there’s a network.”

            Steve has been active in organizing that network on line. “Frankly I liked the 1971 version of John Kerry much better than in 2004.  But I’m working for him anyway.” He’s wearing a green beret, sunglasses, and an anti-Bush t-shirt. “Let’s hope we emerge and sink the Swift Boat Vets.”

            I don’t get the name of the man who tells us, “Job One: Get Kerry elected.  Job Two: If  he is, get our boots up his ass to stop the war.” He gestures with his hands out. “Who better than those who fought a war to tell people to stop it?”

            The vets and military families pose for a group photograph, the Vietnam vets in front, the Iraq vets  in back.  They break into song: “When you’re a vet, you’re a vet all the way, from your first cigarette to your last dying day” – to the West Side Story tune; then a chant: “Hey, hey, Uncle Sam, We remember Vietnam. We don’t want your Iraq War. Bring our troops back to our shore!”

            Victor looks in vain for his Screaming Eagles platoon banner, which he lent to some vets for the march earlier today.  Now it’s somebody else’s souvenir.

Sunday night.  I watch Fox news this evening.  They say the marchers went by “in the tens of thousands” although hundreds of thousands would have been more accurate.  The photos don’t give a sense of the crowd’s size either. Surely some of the helicopters overhead all day took pictures that would show all the packed streets of the parade route, but there are no such views on Fox. 

Fox also keeps showing footage of the little papier mâché dragon float some anarchists set afire.  That wasn’t cool but it also wasn’t typical.  Fox says “This was only one of many scenes in the march,” implying that there were many more instances of uncivil behavior.  Anybody who actually saw that march had to marvel at how peaceful and well-behaved people were, but you wouldn’t know it from Fox news.

I take the ferry from Manhattan to Staten Island tonight, to stay with a friend. A huge yellow full moon is rising over the city as we passed the Statue of Liberty.  It was a good day for democracy, I think.

August 30, Monday.  

At the Republican National Convention, as at the Democratic convention a month ago, security guards look through everyone’s bags before they can enter.  Next to the box of confiscated umbrellas, I notice a box of foodstuffs forbidden entry, including many big beautiful apples.  Security won’t let me take a picture of it.

            Unlike the DNC, the RNC is giving special treatment to members of the press.  You get a goody bag when you pick up your ID tags.  There’s a handsome cloth briefcase with the RNC logo, and inside are some useful things, like a notebook, a disposable camera, and a tiny flashlight; some fun things, like red white and blue M&Ms; some odd things like a large hardcover children’s book; and some things that are beyond odd, like the box of macaroni and cheese.

            If you get here early enough and sign up, a member of the media can get a massage or a haircut.  I could use both, but I pass.

 I sit in the nosebleed seats of Madison Square Garden to watch the early, non-prime-time speakers on this first day of the convention.  One speaker gets a big hand for saying “America is stronger when we support traditional moral values.”  I suspect they’re thinking about gay marriage more than, say, honesty or kindness.

            A black speaker running for Congress says “The foundation of our nation is Christianity and a firm belief in Jesus Christ.”  Wild applause. I check the printed text of his speech that was given out to press at the media information center.  Those words do not appear in it.

            All the speakers refer to the estate tax as “the death tax”.  Nobody mentions that this tax is levied on less than 2% of estates, affecting only the very richest families, and that there are exemptions for family farms.

            Behind the speaker podium is a huge screen that often shows stars on a blue background.  The stars keep shifting as though they’re afloat.  It makes me a bit queasy to watch them too long.

            In the signage under the major media boxes, Al Jazeera appears along with ABC and CNN.  I give the Republicans points for this.  The Dems didn’t allow the excellent Arab news organization to display its name.

            Lower taxes is a big theme here.  People keep talking about “ownership” but nobody acknowledges that the American people own our government.  No speaker here will admit that taxes pay for any services the American people might need.     

            I talk with Shirley, a delegate from Kentucky, and her husband Larry.  “We’re most interested in the security of our country,” Shirley tells me when I ask her which issues she cares about.  In the next breath, though, she says that she and Larry own and operate several skilled nursing facilities, “and with all the cuts, they’re closing everywhere.  We read in the press that nursing homes are getting rich, but that’s not true.  We’re barely breaking even.  I’m not a great proponent of government intervening, but in the case of the elderly, we can’t abandon our older individuals.  Wives and husbands work.  What will happen to their parents?”

            So even though I assume they share their party’s desire for lower taxes, Shirley and Larry want more government spending.  I ask Shirley what she thought about the protests yesterday. She says she pays them no attention.

            When I meet Marva, an alternate delegate from Ohio, she is sitting in her wheelchair outside the Garden, waiting for her hotel bus.  She says “the morality of America” is her big issue.  “One nation under God, not one nation under Gay – that’s what we’ll be if Bush loses.” 

            Marva is most concerned about “the absence of faith.  If we lose all our values, everything’s lost.” She’s written a book titled “It Takes a Church to Raise a Village”.  In it she argues that government can’t solve social problems; she supports Bush’s “faith-based initiatives” to encourage religious organizations to deliver services rather than government agencies.

            I ask Marva if she thinks the war in Iraq was justified.  “There are always mistakes in war,” she says, but adds dismissively, “I’m not an expert on war.”

While the convention takes a break before the evening session, I go looking for some of the protests scheduled for this afternoon.  The Hip Hop rally was supposed to start at Union Square and then join a poor people’s march to the convention, or as close as the police will let them come.

            The only representatives I see of hip hop culture are two young men named KC and Shaun at the front of the march.  Evidently that rally didn’t continue onto the street.  “We’re the last of the black people,” jokes KC.  I ask what issues move them. “I’m angry about George Bush trying to be a dictator,” KC says.  “The Patriot Act is an infringement on our civil liberties.”

            Shaun says, “I’m mad that we went to war for no apparent reason. I have friends that went over and got killed in Iraq.”

            They warm to the subject. “Our president has no humanity or humility,” says KC. “It’s his way or the highway.  You can’t have a president like that!  And I’m mad the cops are out here acting like we’re the enemy.  There’s more cops in NYC today than I’ve ever seen.”

            Shaun adds, “Five million a day extra for cops – out of our tax dollars!”

            As we’re talking, we wander away from the poor people’s march, which meanwhile the police have stopped behind us.  We turn around and look, and there’s the protest back half a block.  When they catch up to us, Shaun and KC melt into the crowd, hoping to meet some girls.

            The poor people’s march has fallen in behind a banner reading “Still We Rise”.  Some signs from this protest: Homeless are Casualties of War. Cure AIDS: Vote! A Better World is Possible. War: What is it Good For? Vote Bush for the Destruction of Humanity. Expose the 9-11 Coverup. W: Worst President Ever!  Schools Not Jails. Stop the War on the Poor. Free Palestine. Who Profits – Who Dies?

            And my favorite: 1 Stealth Bomber = 58,000 teachers’ salaries

            It’s a much smaller crowd than yesterday, but there are several thousand people here, maybe tens of thousands.  I eat a late lunch in a Cuban-Chinese restaurant, because it’s New York, and I can.  Ten policemen sit at one table and two policewomen sit at another.  The sound system is playing John Lennon’s “Imagine”.

            When I go back to the Garden for the evening’s festivities, I find some isolated protesters sitting across the street, with their backs against the wall of a convenience store.  Juan and Andrew wear Chicken Hawk t-shirts and bandanas, as does another friend who ignores me. They have no street addresses and no computers, they say.  I ask them what I ask everybody: What gets you steamed?

            Andrew says the war.  “That’s a pretty big one.  Hearing vets say they’re being misled.  Now they’re using Ground Zero as a backdrop for the campaign.  It’s all exploitation.  People don’t understand, lives are being destroyed.”

            Juan says, “With the minimum wage, you can’t afford to live.”  Andrew adds, “Health care.”  He paid $6500 of his own money when he had a kidney stone because he couldn’t afford insurance.  He knows people who work in halfway houses and nursing homes who are struggling to get by: “People who care for people…you can’t pay the rent.”

            Christine, a suburban-looking woman from Long Island, is standing on the sidewalk handing out copies of an anti-war poem written by her 14-year-old son.  “He’s an A-plus, not just an A student,” she tells me proudly.  “We went to the Million Mom March together on Mother’s Day.” Christine says “a lot of New Yorkers feel the Republicans only came to promote themselves through 9-11.  I don’t think Bush did a lot to prevent 9-11 so I don’t appreciate him promoting himself with it.”

            A young man named Chris is wearing a homemade t-shirt with a picture of Jesus on the front under the word “Liberal”.  He’s “pretty much a lifelong leftie, across the board”.  He teaches in the Bronx, where, according to Chris, “there are no resources”. “If we’re gonna get blown up, we might as well protest and have some fun,” he says.  He spent the summer listening to right-wing radio, noticing how often they boasted about their Christianity.  “I got to thinking, wasn’t Jesus a liberal?”

            The back of Chris’s shirt ticks off his reasons for this conclusion: “1) Fed the poor. 2) Healed the sick. 3) Turned the cheeck [sic]. 4) GOT CRUCIFIED!”  I ask him what kind of responses he gets to the t-shirt. “Most people I go up to just drop their eyes.”

            Chris thinks “some of             the ‘60s energy is back again.  I even heard some cops saying, kinda fondly, Wow, it’s just like the ‘sixties.” He especially likes seeing so many young people in the streets.

            A young woman named Monika holds a sign reading “G.O.P. We are forever in your debt. Thanks Trillions!” An older woman stands nearby.  “This country is becoming like a police state,” says Esperanza, who lived in Spain under Franco and knows something about police states. “Everybody has to get searched. Everybody wearing IDs. So much police. It’s not like a democracy anymore.”

            A policeman tells Monika to move along: “This is a frozen zone. No protest.” She argues but eventually moves on. 

            Mimi, buxom and dark-haired, and grey-bearded Arnie are handing out flyers that say “RNC Alert #3.” It makes several pointed statements in a true/false format, though both answer columns read “true”.  One statement, in part: “Every Republican you see in this city believes in and represents this repressive and illegal regime.” The note at the bottom says “Any Republican actually from New York City should be escorted to a mental hospital immediately.”

            Mimi and Arnie are both social workers.  Arnie is the radical.  Mimi is tagging along, highly amused at Arnie’s antics.  Arnie is frustrated with people who still believe what the Bush administration tells them.  “The same person who finally realized you were right about [there being no] WMDs [Weapons of Mass Destruction], they hear the next lie and forget the last.”

            Arnie doesn’t understand why any social worker wouldn’t blame Bush for “funding cutbacks to programs. They don’t connect anything with politics.”

            He gets in the face of the group of police right in front of the Garden’s main entrance, demanding to know why they’re stopping people from exercising their freedom of speech.  Most of the police in that knot fade back, letting a pretty black woman and a white man with a mustache and a friendly look respond to Arnie’s provocations.

            Thus begins a twenty minute conversation punctuated by hand-waving and laughter on all sides.  When Arnie tells the woman, “I know what you’re doing,” she responds, “You can’t figure ME out.” She tells him, “I had a flag on my car and somebody says, you’re a black woman and you have a flag on your car? First of all, fuck you.  That’s MY car.  Then, I believe in free speech.”

            The cop with the mustache tells Arnie he’s lucky he hasn’t been arrested, because he “violated our first rule”.  What’s that, Arnie asks.  The cop deadpans, “You’re wearing orange socks.”

            At one point both cops and Arnie pause to hassle a young passerby about quitting smoking.  The policewoman says she just quit herself.  Arnie says he quit when he was eleven.  The policewoman learns that he and Mimi are social workers, and launches into a fervant appreciation of the work they do.

            Arnie, Mimi and the policewoman trade stories for a while of awful apartments they’ve been in.

            I take a photo of this odd little party.  But when I ask the policewoman her name, she rolls her eyes and says something about risking her career, so I don’t press the matter.  But if the NYPD knows what it’s doing, she’ll be handling protests from now on.

Arnie, Mimi and I have dinner together at a place a dozen blocks down 8th Avenue.  While we’re eating, Mimi spots a protest march coming up the street outside, and Arnie and I run out to watch. It looks like several thousand people.  I check my protest schedule: this must be the one that started at the U.N. late this afternoon.

            After dinner I walk back toward the Garden, and find that police have barricaded some of the protesters in between 29th and 30th Streets on 8th Avenue, about two blocks away from the Garden.  It looks like they’ve been here a while already.  Many marchers are now lying down on the street, resting on their backpacks or on somebody else.  Others sit in circles, talking or playing music.

            There are swarms of press people here, lighting the darkness with flash bulbs.  The police seem uneasy, the first time I’ve seen them tighten up. 

There are two sides to the story of why the marchers have been blocked.  The police say that protesters kicked a cop off his scooter, and when other cops came to help him the marchers threw a barricade at them.  The protesters say it was nothing like that.  They claim the cops were picking people off one by one all along the march route, then started moving the barricades.

            Olin, a protester who was trained to be a medic for this event, is angry with the  police.  “I think it’s intimidation tactics.  Showing people they’re in charge with an overwhelming show of force.  Why let three-quarters of the group go through, then cut off the last fourth?”

            Some people are still holding up their signs.  One huge banner displays the entire Bill of Rights, written in white on a black background.  People have this one right up front near the thickest line of police, and a few people are haranguing the cops about their First Amendment right to freedom of speech.  With most protesters being so carefully kept out of sight of the Republicans, this seems a relevant discussion to have.

            I join a small circle listening to Pete, from Salt Lake City, Utah, as he plays his guitar and sings. I catch a few lines: “Plastic people with stucco faces/ We’re killing people in far-off places/ Wiping out those wicked races…Killing, blindly filling shopping malls/ We should have taken the time to figure out all the messes that we made…”

            It seems like something more will happen here eventually, but my feet hurt so much from walking for two days straight that I blow the protesters a kiss and head back to the convention, floating through all barriers with my magic press pass.

A man in back of me in the nosebleed seats is on his cell phone.  “Having a wonderful time.  Met a wonderful guy.  He’s full of money.  We’re gonna go out and spend some of it.”

            Below us, the Texas delegates look like a marching band in matching blue shirts and white cowboy hats. They have choreographed moves, too, waving their arms in unison, bouncing and swaying together.

            After the “W” video where Bush talks about his “vision,” I swear the band plays the opening bars of “Another One Bites the Dust”.  But then the tune mutates to “We Are Family,” with the words now “We are for George Bush”.  The Texans do their moves.

            Senator Graham’s speech drones by me until I hear the phrase “There will be no class warfare in this hall tonight.” This idea bears no relation to anything before or after it. Did the Senator spot a poor person in the arena?  I don’t think I’ve seen any.  The Republicans are all dressed extremely well – though of course conservatively.

            The man on the cell phone in back of me yells “Yeah!” so loudly and so often at the most jingoistic statements that people turn around to look at him.  He’s a lean, white-haired man with one of the sourest faces I’ve ever seen.

McCain’s speech reminds me that it is possible to be a reasonable person and still belong to the Republican party.  He urges people to acknowledge the patriotism of the opposing party and to welcome dissent as a healthy part of democracy.  Applause for these ideas is lukewarm at best. 

            As the prime-time speeches wind down, I leave the Garden and walk back to the block where the protesters were a couple hours ago.  No one is there but a few police.  When I ask one where everybody went, she tells me, “They just kind of trickled away, one by one.”

I skip the convention and the protests entirely on Tuesday, visiting friends and relatives around town.  Tuesday, I learn afterwards, is the day when the police decide to make their quota of RNC-related arrests by sweeping over a thousand people into detention, whether or not they have actually broken any laws.  These arrests are so indiscriminate that old ladies trying to cross the street and other random pedestrians find themselves detained along with a few real troublemakers and a lot of people who just showed up for the protest and never bothered a soul.

            I can’t help thinking that when Sunday’s big protest ended with only a couple of hundred arrests, somebody high up must have insisted that the huge security costs for convention week had to be justified by many more arrests.  The smaller protest events during this week, after most demonstrators have gone back to their homes and jobs, make it easy for police to surround and capture participants.  And, while they’re at it, innocent bystanders.

            From the accounts I’ve heard, the police are not generally hostile or brutal in making these arrests.  They have orders, and they’re carrying those orders out. Many of the detainees are released after a few days, the charges dismissed by a judge who scolds the police for over-reacting.

            I watch Arnold’s speech on my friend’s television.  For the first time, I have the horrifying feeling that Bush is going to win this election.  Arnold’s speech is a masterpiece of “true lies”: little pieces of the truth that are blown up and spotlighted to cast the much larger truths into the shadows.

            Arnold grew up under a mild socialist regime in a prosperous, peaceful country.  Yet he manages to give the impression he escaped from Soviet tanks.  He talks about widely-shared American values, and then says if you believe in them, “You are a Republican.”

            A scan of the crowd shows an older black woman in the upper right-hand quadrant of the screen. Everyone around her is grinning and clapping. She sits quietly with a troubled look on her face.

            This is the hard sell.  This is how garbage is always sold to the American people – in this case it’s junk politics instead of junk food.  Without any real accomplishments by the Bush administration to talk about, there is no steak, but they can still sell people the sizzle. 

September 1, Wednesday

I hear on the news that Bush has described the invasion of Iraq as a “catastrophic success”.  For once I think he has spoken the truth.  The same could be said of his tax cuts and environmental policies.

            In Union Square, the American Friends Service Committee has set up the same display of boots, one pair for every American soldier killed in Iraq, that appeared during the Democratic National Convention in Boston’s Copley Square.  Only now there are over a thousand pairs of  boots.

            There is also a memorial display honoring those American troops who have committed suicide during active duty in the Iraq War, twenty-six so far.  Two of these men were from Massachusetts, one from Deerfield, one from Belchertown.

            On the street outside the Convention, a woman with a silver missile attached to her belt tells me, “I’m here to make sure we get four more years of George Bush and this wonderful war!”

            Tonight I was going to trade my press pass in for a temporary floor pass so I could mingle with the delegates, but security has tightened up a notch.  Now only those with delegate or guest passes are allowed on the floor of the arena.  Everybody else is supposed to be in their assigned seats.  If you wander in the halls or linger too long at the railings, security comes up, asks what you’re doing, and politely but firmly points you to the seating area noted on your tags.

            My area is below the nosebleed section, and above the good media seats with their red, white and blue bunting.  This is supposed to be a periodical press seating area, but it’s full of Bush partisans.  They applaud fiercely, yell and pump their fists, and raise signs praising the president.

            I remember one of the security people from the Democratic National Convention in Boston last month, an angry-looking grey-haired man in a nice suit.  He’s the one who kicked a disability-rights activist and reporter out of the press area, where at the time there were plenty of available seats.  He doesn’t seem to recognize me.  I try to avoid his searching gaze.

            From the speeches tonight, you’d think more Americans died from terrorist attacks every year than from domestic violence, reckless driving, and smoking combined.  They present Bush as the father figure who will protect the rest of us from all harm while we continue with our usual activities —  in other words, go shopping.

            And the lies about Kerry keep piling up.  In Congress, the same legislation can go through any number of changes before it finally passes or gets voted down.  Kerry voted for a package of Iraq war funding, for example, that would have made some of it a loan, repayable by the sale of Iraqi oil.  He voted against a version that paid for the whole $87 billion package with American dollars.  The Bush campaign portrays this as a “flip flop” when it’s nothing of the kind.

            Feeling discouraged, I leave before the speeches are over.  Outside the Garden there’s a row of buses waiting to take delegates back to their hotels.  A lone protester walks up and down on the sidewalk.  Her sign reads: “Your integrity is even smaller than your heart.”

            Nazgol is a pretty girl with short dark hair and enormous dark eyes, a little slip of a thing.  A policeman tells her “Your boyfriend should be out here with you.” “He’s in jail,” replies Nazgol. “Do you want to arrest me?” Clearly the officer does not.

            A fat man in a well-cut suit standing nearby begins to laugh, loudly, while Nazgol argues with the police about her right to protest here.  I go over and ask him what he’s laughing at.  “Everybody,” he says.  I fail to see the humor in this situation.  He looks like he has a permanent smirk.

            Two policemen fall in beside Nazgol to make sure she keeps walking. The black cop tells her he’s just doing his job: “I’m not here to like or dislike.”  Delegates already on the buses avert their faces when she waves the sign at them.

            Yesterday, Nazgol says, she had a banner that read “Pro-life? Stop the Killing in Iraq”.  A lobbyist thanked her for making that statement, saying that it made her wonder whether she was part of the problem. Nazgol also tells me that the population in mental hospitals has spiked during this convention. 

            As delegates trickle up the street to the buses, Nazgol shouts at them: “17,000 Iraqis dead! Shame on you!”  A very tall, muscular young man says “Bitch” in a loud flat voice.  When a news photographer approaches and tries to take her picture, this man blocks the shot.  He has tags around his neck but hides them and refuses to tell me his name or official capacity.

            A policeman halts Nazgol in her progress down the sidewalk.  “How many times I see you tonight?” he asks.  She replies, smiling, “Forty or fifty.”  “Too many times,” he says. “I like you.  I like your sign.  But I’ve seen too much of you tonight.” “I’m going home now,” says Nazgol, and she does.

September 2, Thursday, the last day of the RNC

I can’t just keep listening to the convention and quietly taking notes.  It feels too much like a hate rally.  Hoping that maybe even a small disruption can break the spell the Republicans are casting, I buy a large sheet of thin paper and magic markers and spend part of the day lettering a sign.

            The sign folds up small.  I slip it inside the folds of a convention magazine and put it in the outside back pocket of my backpack, which checkpoint security has never opened.  Sure enough, they let me in without looking into that pocket, though a guard breaks off the little file on my nail clippers before she’ll let me through.

            I hear one convention worker tell another, “Everybody else is very calm, but the Texans are out of control.”

            A black woman is cleaning the rest room.  A beautifully dressed and made-up white woman points wordlessly at an unflushed toilet and passes on.  The worker mutters angrily, “I’m not your maid.”

            On the big-screen TV in the media info area, I watch a blonde woman from Ohio get interviewed while a large man on her right jiggles and dances in place.  He has no rhythm or grace whatsoever.  I bet the Republicans wish he’d quit jiggling like that.

            Once again, security is preventing free movement in the halls and no one is getting access to the main floor.  In my assigned area of press seats, a man in the first row holds up a sign that reads: “Cheney and Bush.  Get use to it.” I wonder which periodical has hired this illiterate.

            If I can hold up my sign, I figure it will be like one of those bucking bronco events: a short, wild ride and a rough dismount.

            I find a seat in the middle of a row, as far as I can get from the enthusiastic partisans I noticed the other night.  Succumbing to racial stereotype, I sit in front of three Asian-Americans, hoping they’ll be too polite to actually push me over.

            Pataki, the Governor of New York, goes on at length about September 11 and then smoothly segues to the war on Iraq, as though the two events are cause and effect.  The second time he starts praising Bush for his strength as a war-time leader, I unfold my sign.

            The top word of the sign is “Strong” so nobody bothers me until I shake out the rest of the paper and hold it as high as I can.  I hear people in back of me reading it out loud.  “Strong but Wrong.”  When the people in front of me hear that, they turn around.           The man to my right grabs the nearest corner of the sign and yanks at it.  I yank it back away.  On his second grab, the corner tears off.

            The older man directly in front of me pulls the bottom of the sign with both hands and crumples it in his lap.  I lean over and snatch it back, saying “That’s mine!” and hold it up again. It’s ragged on the bottom now but the words are all still there.

            By now a security guard has gotten the people at the end of the row to move so he can get next to me.  “Come with me, ma’am,” he says.  He waits while I pick up my bag and waits again while I fasten it.  People are shouting at me but I can’t make out the words.

            The guard is joined by several other security people (not, I’m happy to see, including that nasty guy from the DNC) while they hustle me out into the hall.  Somebody thrusts a large black object in my direction, which at the time I think is a camera, so I smile and flash the peace sign at it.  Later I realize it was probably a microphone with a sound baffle, and feel like a complete moron.  Why didn’t I speak?  I must have been more frightened than I thought.

            In the hall, I’m at the center of a growing knot of more than a dozen security, police, and secret service men.  I swear they’re all over 6 feet tall.  They argue for a while about what to do with me.  The first security guy lets go of my arm.  I ask the two giants next to me, “Did you need your tallest people for this?”

            A short black cop comes to stand by me.  I tell him I’m happy to have someone there I can look in the eye without getting a crick in my neck.  He smiles.

            They take my backpack and press tag.  The short policeman, another cop and the guard who first came for me escort me down several floors to the Tactical Operations Center, where the guard goes into another room.  While we wait, I say to the cops, “I guess they didn’t like my sign.” The short one laughs.

            A new guy, probably secret service, comes in to the small lobby. I hand over my driver’s license when asked, and tell him how I got my press credentials.

            I find out later that a few women from the group Code Pink managed to get onto the floor of the Garden to protest during Bush’s speech later tonight.  They had valid guest passes.  The way they got them was to dress up nicely and hang around upscale bars in the delegate hotels, trolling for young male Republicans.  The pickup line of choice was “I can get you a guest pass for the convention…”

            Anyway, security finally decides I’m not a threat.  Since I was only exercising my First Amendment right and others in my area were holding up signs too, there’s nothing to arrest me for.  The two policemen who’ve been hanging around with me escort me out of the building in a leisurely and peaceful fashion.  They point me toward the correct subway line and tell me not to come back, because I will be arrested.

            I feel jubilant on the way out.  The dismount was easier than I expected, and I’m relieved not to be arrested. 

            But I soon crash.  Why didn’t I wait for Bush’s speech?  Why didn’t I yell LIAR, LIAR, LIAR – You lie about Iraq, about the economy, about school reform, about tolerance?  I go from feeling like a hero to feeling like a wimp.

            My seat was so far back in the huge arena that there’s no way I could have been seen or heard from the floor or by the major networks, so it really doesn’t make any difference except to my pride.

            I didn’t want to let Nazgol down.

           The train ride home is peaceful and I talk with no one. I take a cab from the station.  My driver is from Brazil.  He listened to some of the Republican speeches.  “These people talk about morality, and God, and Christianity,” he says. “But they’re not talking about love, are they.”

            That pretty well sums it up.

Alice in Donkeyland: A journal from the 2004 DNC

Monday, July 26, 2004

Thirty-one police motorcycles are parked in front of the Boston Public Library, lined up in two neat rows.  They seem to be there to protect the public from the Falun Gong people who are demonstrating their exercise and meditation techniques in Copley Square across the road.  Falun Gong practitioners are persecuted in China, detained, tortured, and sometimes killed for their beliefs.  But in Boston today they exude a cheerful eagerness to please.

Groups are practicing dance moves.  There are a dozen or so fetching young ladies dressed in tight, blindingly pink bodysuits with flared legs and silvery ornaments; several dozen older women shaking their arms overhead, the bells on their bracelets tinkling up a storm; and hundreds of other men and women dressed in day-glow yellow hats, pants, and T shirts.  The only thing I see to object to is their color scheme, which runs to the fluorescent.  Maybe those motorcycles belong to the Fashion Police.

Black helicopters drone overhead.  I don’t stick around for the Falun Gong show.

Near the Park Street mass transit station, Robert, a resident of Newton, Massachusetts, is walking around with signs bearing an unusual message: Give all living things the vote.

One of Robert’s signs, adorned with a googly-eyed cartoon slug, reads: “Universal suffrage means a vote for all.  Elect-a-Slug!  Will not nuke world; will not screw interns; did not invent internet; is not religious bigot.  Do Not Vote Primate!”

Robert works for the Smithsonian Institute and used to contract for DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. 

“If ants had the vote, wouldn’t it be a better world?” he asks.  I suggest that humans would have to form coalitions, perhaps with dogs and cats.  “Those fellow travelers!” he replies.

Two nice ladies sit at a DNC information table near the T station, hatless in the hot sun.  They’re pointing people in the wrong direction to St. Paul’s church.

The ladies tell me it was “bedlam” here on Sunday with all the anti-war demonstrators.  However they also say the protest was “very peaceful.  Well controlled.”  I’m not sure if they mean self-control or otherwise.  Here come the black helicopters again.

Half a dozen army MP’s, both men and women in camouflage that stands out in the urban jungle, relax in the shade of the T station, chatting and watching the tourists.

I talk to some of the men who live on the streets around here, among the few Bostonians who haven’t left town to escape the predicted madness of convention week.  Frank has been homeless for 37 years.  A car wreck left him disabled enough to be sent to a special school for kids, but not disabled enough to qualify for disability benefits.  He is blue-eyed and curly-haired, and would be good-looking if he weren’t missing so many teeth.

Frank says it doesn’t matter who wins the election this fall.  Whoever runs the country “does me no good.  I’m still homeless.”  His friend carries a grey blanket wrapped in plastic under his arm.  What should the government do for homeless people?  “Give us housing, that’s it!” he says.  But Frank disagrees.  He doesn’t want a hand-out, he wants an opportunity to work, and housing he can afford.

“If I get a job, they take away my check,” says Frank. “It’s a catch-22.  No matter how I slice and dice it, I’m still fucked.  There’s not a dime of difference.  Democrats will give you lip service, Republicans will give you nothing.”

Rena, from the state of Washington, is here with the Dennis Kucinich campaign.  “This is the first time I’ve ever gone to investigate a major political candidate and found I like where he is on every issue.  I’m astounded.  Delighted.  He gives me hope.”     

Rena is helping guide people in to a social justice forum at St. Paul’s Church, where Kucinich and Jesse Jackson will be speaking later.  She’s practicing what she calls “compassionate communication,” which seems to consist of saying necessary things gently, over and over.  She has a sweet round midwestern face and curly red hair under her wide-brimmed straw hat.      

Bunny, a thin woman in Birkenstocks with short white hair and glasses on a green-beaded chain, came down from Vermont.  She’s in town to “bring progressive issues to John Kerry.”  She hopes Kerry is keeping a lot of leftie ideas under his hat.  But she promises, “If he gets in, we’ll be back in the streets the next day.”

An articulate young white man in a motorized chair and a DNC shirt is explaining Kerry’s money needs to two elegant young black women in office wear.  They’re signing a petition.  Meanwhile, delegates stroll up and down Tremont Street, unfolding maps and peering around for landmarks.

Some people in the small crowd on the sidewalk are wearing T-shirts that say “Regime Change Begins at Home”.  One sign reads “Kerry and Bush are Against the Poor”.

Inside the packed church, I ask a man with a pleasant open face what his tag says — is he press or a delegate?  “I’m nobody,” he says; “This is for the bus.”

Here’s Leslie from California again, the exuberant blonde I saw yesterday on the subway.  Today she’s in a turquoise cotton top, white shorts and flipflops, smiling steadily, telling people entering the church, “Everywhere but the first two rows.”  She was up at 6 a.m. today, she says, “doing the newspaper run.”  Later, she plans to go take a nap.  Tomorrow, she promises to be in full regalia again at the protest fair on the Commons.  I wish I had taken a photo of her on the T in her little apron saying No More Bush, with its picture of a woman’s shaved crotch.

Four women are hugging one another near the entrance.  “So glad you made it.”  “I escaped!”  “Let’s get our own pew.”  One says, referring to the convention center I suppose, “Everyone who’s going in there is very well dressed.  With huge IDs.”  She moves her hands to indicate hang tags.  They all laugh.

Sally, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, was at a Code Pink rally outside the protest pen when they tried to put up a banner.  At the time, the father of a soldier killed in Iraq was addressing the rally.  “Police were taking down this dangerous pink banner.  There were a lot more police with machine guns than protesters.  A little bit of overkill.”

Jim, a sturdy grey-haired man with glasses, a pug nose and a mustache, is wearing his Vets for Peace ball cap.  He’s from Orange County, California.  He says they set up crosses at Huntington Beach on Sunday at sundown, one for each soldier killed in Iraq.  The crosses fill an acre of beach.

“Our best supporters are the young Marines” from nearby Camp Pendleton, says Jim.  “We try to educate the public about the true cost of war, honor the fallen and the wounded, and think about the needs of vets once they return.  Whether you’re for or against the war, we should honor the ones who are making the sacrifices.  Older Republicans, Eisenhower Republicans, they see it.  We’re not there to argue.  We ask people to think about their government’s policies.”

Jim went across the United States with the National Vets Stop the War bus tour.  “Thirteen crazy Vietnam vets, some from the first Gulf War, all suffering from various degrees of post traumatic stress syndrome!  We had a good time though…The bus was decked out with graphics.  People clapped and honked their horns, through the heart of America.  The occasional person flips you off, but not much of that.”         

The vets came to Boston last Tuesday for a national conference at Emerson College.  Daniel Ellsberg and Ralph Nader were there too.  “I was afraid Ellsberg was going to jump him!” says Jim, “But he said he’d wait til later.”
“We’re patriots for peace.  We believe in America strongly.”  Sally, who’s been listening, says: “We don’t think it’s patriotic to support a criminal war.”      

Onstage, a young Asian-American woman talks about being made to feel like an outsider after September 11.  She says of her community, “Everyone has had something happen to them or to someone they know.”

I watch Kucinich speak for a while.  He’s so short.  I’m short too, but I’m not about to run for president.  If liberals could just stack him up on top of Robert Reich and Michael Dukakis, they’d have the perfect candidate: really smart, and really tall.  My favorite Kucinich line: “It doesn’t matter where you come from, but where you’re going, and who you’re bringing with you.”

Jesse Jackson delivers a rousing speech on building a movement “from the bottom up, not the top down,” but the church is hot, and I sneak back out to the sidewalk.  An older woman holds a banner that reads “Invest in caring, not killing”.  About a dozen young people trudge in a circle in front of the church, chanting “Bush, Kerry, no solution, fight for a Communist revolution”.  The other people milling around are ignoring them.

A couple of libertarians carry signs reading “Conservatives Organized to Crush Kerry/ End the Nanny State/ Free the market and the rest will follow/ Liberty: It’s what’s for dinner” and “Enjoy Capitalism!”  The tall green-haired one also carries a large Don’t Tread on Me flag.

Other sign slogans: “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Bush is President.”  “SHARING will save the world.”  “Another World is Happenin’.”  One popular T-shirt has a picture of a backbone with the various vertebrae labeled: instant runoff voting; end weapons trade; reject water privatization; embrace diversity” etc..

LaRouche supporters, mostly black, mostly male, sing several choruses of an ode to their leader, whom they call an FDR Democrat.  Very nice harmonies.  A guy in a red polyester Hawaiian shirt holds a sign saying “Democrats: Hermaphrodites are People Too!”  I’m pretty sure it’s a guy.

On my way to the FleetCenter, which I would much prefer to call the New Garden, I overhear three policemen talking about possible protests.  I can just catch a few scattered words: “…blood…excrement…rumor…” A few minutes later I visit the result of that kind of rumor: the protest pen across from the FleetCenter, formally named the Free Speech Zone.  A chilling concept.

And it’s a chilling place.  Long, dark, narrow, dirt-floored, roofed by the iron hulk of an obsolete overpass, with razor wire on top and heavily armed guards on the look-out.  The area is surrounded by concrete Jersey barriers and two high rows of chain link fence, plus a bunch of plastic sheeting.  Netting is strung between the fence and the overpass.  The space suggests an attempt to create Tupperware for terrorists.

A small grey-haired man stands off by himself, holding a poster that reads: “Design by Sharon Rumsfeld Associates.”

The podium is located toward the rear of the space, behind a structure that might be a mechanical shed, close to the fence.  One woman remarks to me, “It’s like if you put a couch in your living room turned around toward the wall.” 

The space is mostly deserted, now and also on other days when I drop by.  There are a dozen or so Republican activists wearing giant cutout flipflops with holes for their heads, and about a hundred anti-abortionists.  A man with a naked buttocks mask on his bottom and devil horns points out Randall Terry, one of the movement’s leaders, a telegenic guy in a handsome tan suit.

The anti-abortion people have covered nearby sidewalks with slogans in chalk, which have begun to be erased by passing feet.  Two burly men are holding up big signs: “Support President Bush/Trust Jesus.”  A friendly-looking old man in an Uncle Sam costume also holds pro-Bush signs.  “I’m so tired,” he says.  “Not of getting my picture taken, I was up late…”After I take his photo and thank him, and say I hope he’ll get some rest, he says “I hope you lose.”

The anti-abortion crowd makes way for the next group of protesters, who turn out to be vicious homophobes.  They carry signs like “Boston = Sodom” and their speakers say such venomous things that I can’t bear to stay and listen.  One man stands stolidly before the platform holding up both middle fingers.  He’ll probably be okay.  There are certainly enough police around to keep him from getting stomped to death.

When I come back later, a group arguing for the rights of Palestinians has taken the stage.  One young Jewish woman says, “I feel a connection to the land of my ancestors.  I just don’t feel the need to own it.”  Signs on the fence read: “Is this what democracy looks like?”  “Palestine always looks like this.”  And “Whatever happened to the First Amendment?”

I talk with Kate, from Cambridge, and Priscilla, from Andover, Massachusetts, who are watching the action outside the pen.  Priscilla says she believes in free speech, “but the way these anti-gay people are talking, so ugly, sick and hateful…”

Bumpersticker spotted on a barricade: “I need to find a florist who can send two bushes to Iraq”. 

At the FleetCenter, long lines of people are going through the security checkpoints inside big white tents.  They’re confiscating everyone’s water bottles.  Are we feeling safe yet?  I’m actually grateful to the guard who dumps out the contents of my backpack, because my feta cheese wrap has leaked through its paper sack and was about to ruin my notebook.  He didn’t notice my little bag of nuts and dried fruit, or else didn’t consider them a security risk.

At the entrance to the building, pigeons walk among the crowd.  Overheard from a group of radio press: “Looks like birds are going to be a problem.”

Rabiul, a Deaniac from Kansas, is waiting for a friend so he takes a minute to talk with me.  He’s a businessman who was born in Bangladesh and has lived in the U.S. for 20 years.  His main concern in this election, he says, is “Openness.  We have a right to know what our government is doing.”  He also worries about maintaining a healthy environment for future generations.

I ask Rabiul if he had any problems with people after September 11.  Even friends “gave me a different look,” he says.  His son was outside playing, and some neighborhood children teased him, saying “You’re from another country, go back to your country.”  His son replied, “I was born here.”  Rabiul told him he was right to say that, and not fight.  “By force you cannot get respect.”  He adds that right after September 11, one of his neighbors told him to let him know if anyone gave them trouble.

Rabiul says he went back to Bangladesh for a visit in 1999 and had only good things to say about this country.  He tells me that when he brought his elderly parents to America, they couldn’t get insurance and couldn’t apply for citizenship because they were too old to learn English.  He was desperate to get them health care, afraid they’d come all that way just to die.

Rabiul went for help to Kathleen Sebelius, the Kansas insurance commissioner at that time, now governor of the state.  She went to work on the problem, and three months later had a new regulation in place so his parents were able to get health insurance.

I enter the FleetCenter at the same time as Michael Moore and Al Franken, who greet each other over the heads of the swarms of press.  I make my way to the fourth level print media area.  An officious woman named Mary says I can’t sit there while wearing my hat.  I’ve wrapped an orange plastic banner around it that reads “First Amendment Zone,” which the press area is evidently not.  Mary is worried about how the area looks on television.  Another writer has a classy little black straw hat on that must meet the dress code.  It’s boring here anyhow and I go wandering again.

An announcer asks the crowd to pose for the official convention photograph.  “Please look at the digital clock across from the stage, toward the Fox 25 News banner,” she says.  At the mention of Fox, the crowd boos lustily.  And then grins for the camera.

Music so far: “We are Family” and “Dancing in the Street”.

There’s a very large man with a ponytail dressed head to foot in bright orange out in front of the crowd, dancing.  Fortunately he’s a pretty good dancer because you feel compelled to look at him, regardless.

Now I’m in what people are calling the nose-bleed seats, rising steeply in the top tier just under the bags of a million balloons.  Right now they’re not too crowded.  I sit next to Donald, whose wife Kaye, a schoolteacher, is one of the Texas delegates.  We’re both glad to have a railing to hold onto.

Don’s a retired sheriff.  He plans to run for Justice of the Peace.  It annoys Don that Bush claims to be a Texan, pointing out he wasn’t born in that state.  “He broke Texas, and now he’s breaking America,” Don says.

The musicians are playing a version of “Rollin’ on the River” reworded into “Kerry in the Future” as far as I can tell.  The Dems need to lose this little ditty as soon as possible.

Gore is saying “America is a country where any boy or girl can grow up to win the popular vote,” and gets a big laugh.

Now Hillary’s speaking, but I’m listening to Don.  He was a police investigator enforcing environmental laws for a while.  “We cleaned up the water so you can swim in it again,” he says proudly.  He once got to guard Barbara Jordan, the late black congresswoman from Texas, who, Don thinks, was “a great lady.”  Hillary is standing on stage with the other congresswomen, and the band is playing “Everyday People.”

Joyce, sitting nearby and listening to our conversation, identifies herself as a banker from Kentucky.  When I tell her my kids were born in Kentucky, she gives me her state pin.  Not to be outdone, Don gives me his little American flag pin.

It’s hot up here and I’m tired, but I stick around to hear Jimmy Carter, in my opinion the only real Christian we’ve had as president.  Straight and slim at 80, he’s not speaking as clearly as he used to, but the crowd responds to him with great affection.

I leave before Bill Clinton speaks.  I’m sure he’ll drive people wild.  We’d re-elect him in a heartbeat if we could, no matter what the meaning of “is” is.

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

On the subway, I meet Debrosha and her daughter Katie, the Massachusetts coordinator for Rock the Vote.  They’re lugging materials for events around town.  Rock the Vote is strictly nonpartisan.  They don’t care who you vote for as long as you vote.  Clearly, though, registering young people and black people will help the Democrats.

Katie’s going to school at Tufts.  Her mom came in from Allentown Pennsylvania to help her this week.  Debrosha is a big woman with a wonderful smile, which shines forth whenever she looks at her smart, pretty daughter.  She’s exhausted already though, doing so much walking in this heat.

Katie says, “The last election showed us how much one person’s vote counts.”  She tells me that when young people say they’re non-political, she asks if they know there’s a bill to reinstate the draft.  “That’s a reason to vote right there!…I don’t think you have a right to complain if you don’t do anything about it.”

She’s wearing a black stretch band across her chest that reads “fcuk you, i’m voting” — from French Connection, United Kingdom, hence the fcuk acronym.  “It’s a little harsh, but people my age, this is the kind of thing that gets them to look.”  Katie tells people to find out what the candidates stand for, not to vote a certain way because their parents or their friends do.

Katie doesn’t feel like the media are doing a good job letting people know about the candidates’ voting records and backgrounds.  “We spent a lot of time on the Clinton controversy, and I think if we were willing to do that, we should be willing to educate people [about the candidates].”  Not surprisingly, education is one of her main concerns.  “Other countries are catching up to us because they’re willing to educate their people.”

Debrosha says they’re sending Katie’s 12-year-old brother to a private school on scholarship; they have no money.  “I’m really a public school person, but I can’t sacrifice my son.”  The last straw was her son’s public school French class, where they had no textbooks.  The teacher was good at Spanish but didn’t really speak French well enough to be teaching it.  She wrote the lessons on the blackboard for the kids to copy, and if they copied the lesson wrong, they learned it wrong.

Debrosha’s first vote was for Carter, and she’s still proud of him.  “He always tried to help the little people.”

We part near the Commons, where the Falun Gong people have set up horrifying tableaux showing various torments they’ve been subjected to in China.  Torturers and torturees pose with the same disciplined stillness as the meditators sitting on the grass, minus the blissful little smiles.

On the street later on, checking the line outside yet another social justice forum, I meet Fernando, a radio reporter from LA.  I tell him I’m starting to pick up some Spanish from a late-night Latin music program called Con Salsa, and he says, “Never forget, there are 500 million people waiting to be your friends.”

Boston has hung lush baskets of flowers from lampposts all around downtown.  There are red, white and blue clothes and furniture in store windows, and an “Art is Democratic” banner over an art gallery.  The streets are unusually empty.

I wonder if anyone warned the out-of-town young ladies in their high-heeled backless sandals about Boston’s cobblestone sidewalks.

The hemp store is flying an American flag out front with a sign pointing out that this flag, like the original, is made of hemp: “If true patriots like Washington and Jefferson grew hemp, why can’t we?”

At Copley Square, the American Friends Service Committee has set out a pair of combat boots for every American soldier killed so far in Iraq, and a big pile of street shoes, though not big enough to represent every Iraqi civilian casualty.

Grigory, a Russian from New York City, stands near his sculpture commemorating all the victims of terrorism worldwide.  It includes two clear plastic towers like Boston’s holocaust memorials, covered with photos of the firemen and police who lost their lives at the twin towers, toy buses and trains that have been crushed and speckled with red paint, a world map with the locations of atrocities marked in black, a tiny picture of Daniel Pearl, and the photo of a little girl with the words, “People Protect Me.” 

Grigory says, “I ask – for me is question – what to do with this?”  I take his picture.  He seems wistful; a man with many questions and no answers.

Dawn and Andy, independent media people from Rochester, New York, are grabbing people for interviews about their reactions to these displays.  Andy says, “I’m outside the two-party system, voted for Nader last time.  If I’d lived in a swing state I would’ve done different.”

Near one of the delegates’ hotels, I meet Peggy, on the finance staff for the DNC.  This is her fourth convention.  “LA was a lot bigger.”  She’s a Carter fan too: “He’s everybody’s hero.”  She finds the convention is useful “for the delegates to compare notes and network, get close to the politicians.  It energizes you, kind of makes you feel like what you’re doing at home makes a difference.  Makes you more committed, reinforces you in the fight.”  She’s in a hurry and hustles off to work.

Flashing my press pass, I get a seat on a delegate bus.  I ask my seatmate, Gil, a delegate from Berkeley, California, if he’s been to any parties.  “Six people in a closet: call it a party, it’s a good time!”  His main beef is Bush’s foreign policy.  “This last year, we’ve been a bully, or people think we are.  We should use our influence, not through strength but through wisdom.”

Gil is an Asian-American with two children.  He misses the eight years of peace and prosperity under Clinton.  He’s concerned with working family, labor and education issues.  As a fire captain and paramedic, “I see the trends.  We go on more calls because people aren’t getting health care.  The way speakers presented last night was right on.  We need health care for everyone.  And strengthen first responders to reduce crime.”

He adds, “I have discussions all the time with my Republican friends.  We’re not bullies.  We’ve never gone into a country and taken over like this…We’ve lost long-established relationships with just about everybody.  Our administration does not collaborate with groups internally or externally.”  He’s excited to be at the convention “to get our message out: we’re going to forge change that will benefit our country.”

The bus takes a peculiar, twisting route through the underground arteries that are closed to other traffic for the week.  When we get to the FleetCenter, we can hear an amplified voice from the protest pen.  It’s loud but distorted.  I hear something about how the Bible says homosexuality is a sin.

Signs facing the bus parking area from the pen: “Don’t Cage Liberty: Cage the Fear-Mongers.”  “Did the Patriots Die for This?”  “Pens are for Animals!”

Also: “Kerry: Respect the World Court – Israel’s Wall is Illegal!”  “Occupation is Oppression.”  And “FUTURE OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT.”

Just outside the FleetCenter, I speak with Vincent, a square-faced, white-haired man in a union T-shirt, the Kerry co-chair from Fresno, California.  Vincent is upset.  He shows me a small paper sign with a photo of a woman’s eyes within a Muslim headdress and the slogan: Say No to War in Iraq.  He had five of these, but security took away the other four.  Why are the Democrats stifling dissent, he wants to know.

“Unity, fine,” says Vincent.  “But to enforce it like this is not democratic.”  He’s trying to get other delegates to make signs and hold them up later, but so far has not found anyone to go along with him.  One of the political directors told him they don’t want to “send a bad message.”  Stopping war is a bad message?

I spend a little while trying to find out who makes the rules about what to confiscate.  I ask a policeman, who points me to a secret service guy, who says it was up to the DNC people.  Then I ask a small young woman with a DNC volunteer T-shirt, but she has no idea.  This is her first question on the job and she is clearly crestfallen at being unable to answer it.

Inside the Center, the band is playing “Celebrate Good Times.”  Three black women in the Oregon delegation are dancing together.  I’ve followed Vincent in his quest for fellow dissenters.  Joe, a doctor from New Hampshire, says “I’m proud of you for speaking out this way,” but refuses to join Vincent’s protest.  Joe says there’s a close race in his state and he doesn’t want to embarrass former governor Jeanne Shaheen.

Vincent says, “If you can’t speak out at a convention, where can you speak out?”

I notice the Kansas delegates hold up home-made signs when Governor Sebelius, Rabiul’s hero, begins her speech, so I go over to ask how they got them through security.  The state whip says they gave the signs to the DNC person assigned to their delegation, who said any sign was okay as long as it had a cardboard tube handle and not a stick.  But I can’t find Vincent again to tell him.  His signs had no stick, anyhow.

Anthony, an official-looking person whose position I fail to discover, says: “You need some standards.  No obscenity.  You don’t want signs on national TV that might be offensive, but if it’s a message of peace, I have no objection.”

Joe, the whip for Massachusetts, says: “There are probably twenty valuable minutes here, prime time.  You try to choreograph.  Last night I saw a half a dozen rogue signs.”  He adds, ruefully, “We’re living in a different world.”

I ask Joe about the protest pen.  “The Dems didn’t set that up, a judge did that,” he says, which is not the case.  He points out the pink scarves people are wearing that say “Give Bush a Pink Slip” to show that all forms of free expression are not being repressed.

Tonight in the writing press area, before Mary kicks me out again because of the hat, I meet Wayne, a very nice guy who is distributing hard copies of the podium speeches.  He tells me about the media information room on the third level where he gets the handouts.

This place becomes my favorite part of the building.  Only a few kinds of pass will get you onto the floor, which has its own escalator.  Another round of security keeps everyone but some media people out of the corridor that leads to the media info room, CNN’s space, storerooms full of folding chairs and bottled water, and one of the entrances that lead to the stage.

It’s in this well-guarded hall that I get within six feet of Hillary, looking fabulous in a light blue suit, and brush against Senate minority leader Tom Daschle as he hurries off the floor.  I also see several other famous people, but I don’t know who they are.

By 8 o’clock, I’m not feeling up to making any more new friends, so I head out.  But en route, I encounter the young volunteer who couldn’t answer my question earlier.  She’s radiant with pleasure: someone gave her a pass so she could get inside.  “You’re leaving?  But this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!”  Meekly, I turn around and sit through several more speeches before giving up.

I leave through a break in the fencing where security of several stripes makes sure people can get out but not get in.  Just outside, a woman in a pink robe cries, “Hey!  I made that banner!”  She is looking at my hat.

So I meet Robyn Su, who created the plastic First Amendment Zone banners three years ago, when “we discovered they were keeping protesters away from Bush and the media.”  Her serene pink presence signifies a level of alert that has nothing to do with Rumsfeld’s screwed-up rainbow.  He was so unfamiliar with the concept that the alert colors go red-orange-yellow-blue-green, instead of green-blue.  But we never seem to reach those peaceful frequencies anyway.

My night isn’t over yet.  On the train home, Barry and Linda are still fizzing with excitement.  “We’re not press, we’re troublemakers.”  He’s been telling people that Bush had sex with Don King.  “There are pictures!”  I personally would be thankful if Photoshop had not made that particular image possible.  Barry is from New York, where he has been happily making trouble for three-odd decades.

Linda is just along for the ride.

Wednesday night, July 28, 2004

I hitch a ride on the hotel bus after work.  Mary, a plump, attractive blonde, is an alternate delegate from Alameda, California.  She’s felt “pretty disenfranchised” since the last election.  “I’m raising a girl, and it feels increasingly unsafe.  I looked at the candidates way early.  I read a lot, and thought that Kerry is aligned with what I think we need to be doing.  And happily, other candidates had a lot of good things to say.  But I don’t know if they were the ones to take the fight all the way.  It took a wide range of viewpoints in the campaign to make us realize we could all come together.”

Because of their little girl, Mary says, “education is a huge issue.  We [California] went from being one of the best to the worst.”  She tells me that tuition at state colleges has gone up 40%.  “My sister isn’t making enough to pay for the last semester she needs for her teaching credentials.  She has to pay someone to watch her teach, and she’s been teaching for four years – in east LA.  She went to find out about programs to help teachers in high-risk areas, and she was told they weren’t funded.  They’re just words on paper.”

Mary’s husband, Phil, is an attorney.  “We’ve generally ignored the authority of the international community,” Phil says.  “It’s as though you were arrested and taken to court, and you walked out, saying this court has no authority over me.”  Phil and Mary are amused at all the media attention they’re getting at a convention where media workers outnumber delegates almost 3 to 1.  “These television people wanted get footage of us packing to leave.  Well, sorry, we’re already packed!”

Phil and Mary get into a conversation with a sports lawyer, another alternate, which lasts until we get to the FleetCenter.  They’re all concerned about electronic voting. 

Nobody bothers me in the fourth level writing area tonight, since it’s raining and I left my hat at home.  Supposedly security isn’t allowing umbrellas into the arena.  The local convenience stores have run out of ponchos.

Somebody here has been bothering another writer though: Marsha, a crew-cut woman in a wheelchair who has a wheelchair symbol tattooed on her shoulder.  She writes for Mouth Magazine, “The Voice of the Dislabeled Nation.”  I hear a fuss, and see her fuming; steam is almost visible, rising from her ears.  A tall, broad-shouldered, well-dressed man with stylish grey hair has just stalked away.  “He said, That’s my seat, get out of my seat,” Marsha says. He wouldn’t identify himself when she asked him, or when I asked him either.  “I’ve never known anyone to be so rude!” she says.

Marsha tells me she used to work for Newsweek before she became disabled with multiple sclerosis.  “They say it’s the most accessible convention in history, and it’s a nightmare.”  There was a piece of rubber a couple of inches high that she couldn’t get over at the entrance, for example; “Someone had to lift my wheelchair over it.” At the disability caucus, blind people asked for the braille versions of the handouts but the DNC didn’t have any.

The band is playing “Power to the People”.  Dennis Kucinich is getting up to speak.

The mysterious grey-haired man says that Marsha assaulted him “verbally and physically.”  He says the seat belongs to a writer “for UPS” who’s in a wheelchair.  I said, if he comes, I’m sure she’ll move.  He says if she won’t move, he’ll call security and have her arrested.  I get distracted for a few minutes, and when I look again, Marsha is gone.  In her place is a young man in a ball cap, without a wheelchair.  I’m betting he’s not with UPS, either.

Jarrett the second and his father, Jarrett the first, are waiting in this area for Al Sharpton’s turn to speak.  Jarrett the younger has been called the Reverend’s “Mini-Me”, and his hair tells you why.

Jarrett junior is the National Youth Director for Sharpton’s civil rights organization, the National Action Network.  Jarrett got involved with Sharpton when he came to Phoenix, Arizona, where he and his father live.  “What impressed him most: I registered ten thousand people to vote, through the grassroots level, at churches in the African and Hispanic American communities.  We broke the back of the Republican stronghold.” Jarrett junior is seventeen.

“Poor education is hurting us everywhere,” he says.  “No textbooks in schools.  Lack of qualified administrators and instructors.  Lack of security.  Lack of civic pride in our communities.  These all lead to our downfall.  The state of education is leading to a generational trend of disenfranchisement among African-Americans, poor whites, and other minorities.”

Jarrett senior keeps stopping himself from interjecting his comments into our conversation, determined to give his son the lion’s share of limelight, if that’s what I’m providing here.  He’s a disabled vet who “helped the Reverend shape his agenda on veterans’ issues.”

Sharpton’s speech electrifies the speech-weary crowd – even some people in the press area are whooping and hollering by the end of it.  The Jarretts go downstairs to rejoin his entourage.

The programmable strip of neon that runs all around the top section of the arena usually shows either white stars racing on a blue background, or one of the catch-phrases like “A Stronger America”.  During Sharpton’s address, it reads “SHOUT!  SHOUT!  SHOUT!”

I head up to the seventh level, where tonight all the seats are full.  I hear someone say that the DNC gave out three times as many passes as there are seats.  Some of the overflow crowd sits on the floor out in the hall, watching the whole thing on television.   I sit down next to Zachary, who goes to Tufts University in the Boston area, and Bob, from Burlington, Massachusetts.

Zachary is studying international relations. “It’s no surprise that the rest of the world wants Kerry to win,” he says.  “They don’t think well of us right now.”

“I’d like to see some improvements in homeland security,” he adds.  “Our seaports are largely unprotected from weapons of mass destruction, bio-weapons and nukes coming in.  Bush likes to say he’s tough on terrorism, but we’re almost as unprotected as we were before 9-11.”

Bob has been around long enough to know that some things are easier said than done.  “The key is if we can increase security at ports without endangering freedom.  The fact that we have screeners at airports, it’s not making us any safer.  What’s making our aircraft safer is, now [if there’s a highjacking attempt], passengers know that if they don’t do something, they’ll die and take thousands of people with them, so now they’ll act.  Before, they thought if you would sit down and be quiet, nothing will happen.”

Bob says he’ll give me a quote “you’re not going to print.”  Okay, I say.  “George Bush is a revolutionary,” he says.  “He’s trying to change the nature of America and reverse the direction we’ve been traveling in for the last 70 years.  He tolerates no dissent, no disagreement.  In a different culture, he could easily be an Ayatollah Khomeini.”

I think of Bob a few days later when I see a bus with a big poster for Louis, Boston, on its side that reads: “Free speech is a luxury.”  Does that mean most people can’t afford it?

Bob goes on to say, “When someone knows that God is on his side, and anyone who disagrees with him is against God’s purpose, he’s capable of anything.  Whether in fact George Bush would do ‘anything’, I don’t know.  But we have indications — Iraq, for example – that it’s possible.”

Zachary adds, “What’s scary is what happens if there’s another terrorist attack in America.  What if there’s a nuclear attack and three million die instead of three thousand, what would we do?”

It’s starting to feel like a small town in here.  I see two girls from western Massachusetts, wearing Muslim headscarves, who were so anxious to get inside they couldn’t spare a moment to talk with me when I saw them earlier.  This time I’m already in conversation with Zachary and Bob, so I just wave to them and they wave back to me, smiling.

I drift back to the press-only third level and practically smash into Jesse Jackson, who’s in a big hurry.  I tell his retreating back, “Loved Green Eggs and Ham!”  He gave his reading the full fiery Baptist preacher treatment on Saturday Night Live a few years ago, one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.  Come to think of it, though, that’s probably not what he wants people to remember him for.  Jesse!  Love your policy speeches, babe!

Security has closed all the entrances to the convention floor by now.  Most of the escalators have been reversed, so you can leave but not come back.  Trying to find your way around is like being trapped in an Escher print.

All right, I’m leaving.  I’m going to put in some hours on my day job again tomorrow so I don’t use up all my vacation time on this spectacle.  First, though, I try to have a convention party experience.  I go to a bar near the FleetCenter to check out the Rock the Vote party, but Katie isn’t there, and Coyote Ugly doesn’t have nearly as many customers as it has bras flying from the rafters, and the band is much, much too loud.

I’ve heard the Red Hot Chili Peppers are playing a big party on Newbury Street and press can get in, so I give it a go.  You can hear the band from blocks away and they sound terrific.  But when I finally snake my way through the crowds in the street to the front entrance, a security guy tells me I could have come between 4 and 6 to get a special ticket, but it’s too late now.

Back on the subway.  Here I meet James, an events coordinator for groups like Planned Parenthood, which has volunteers handing out stickers in the arena and sometimes just plastering them on unwary passersby.  His main issues are reproductive choice at home, and the global “gag rule” the Bush administration has imposed on family planning groups abroad.  If they even mention the option of abortion, they can’t get any federal funding.  For these interests, “Thank my mother,” James says, a teacher who dragged him to union events while he was growing up in Colorado.  I take a photo of him next to a guy with a delegate’s pass who can’t get a word in edgewise.

Katie, Laura and Joe are heading back to Tufts, where they’re staying in a dormitory.  They took a 24 hour bus ride from Kentucky to get here, hoping to get into the convention somehow, as they came without any passes.

Laura’s from Illinois, a sophomore at Bowling Green, Kentucky, who doesn’t know what she’ll major in yet.  She has a migraine.  You can’t tell it from her smile.

Katie studied journalism and political science at the University of Kentucky, with a minor in women’s studies, and is now doing graduate work in urban policy at the New School in New York.

Joe’s a political science and history major at Oberlin.  Before they came, he spoke to the executive director of the Kentucky Dems, who told him to come to Boston, go to the caucuses, and keep asking.  Today he went to lunch with the Kentucky delegation, and twenty minutes later he had his pass.

“Our most important issue is the standing of America in the world.  All the issues add up to, if we’re proud to say, traveling abroad, that we’re American.  It’s tough to say that now.”  They’re all concerned about the environment, too, says Joe.

Katie worries about the growing divide between upper and lower classes.  “We don’t need the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.”  Also, “the attempt to put a gay marriage ban into the Constitution is just disgusting and unnecessary.  It’s an attack on every American’s rights.”

Laura’s ex-boyfriend  is a Marine.  “I have so many friends that are serving overseas,” she says.  “We’re losing too many people over there and I want it to be over as quickly as possible.”

They all agree that the deficit is a problem too, “that we’ll be paying back, and our kids,” Katie says.

They get out at my subway stop, planning to walk the two miles to Tufts in spite of Laura’s headache and the pouring rain.  I hail a taxi and drop them off at the dorm instead.  I feel like Mother Theresa.

Thursday night, July 29, 2004, the last night of the convention

I know the ropes by now.  I eat my supper from a takeout bag, sitting on a tarp-covered box outside the security tents.  So far the only money I’ve spent inside the FleetCenter is on phone calls.  I might be the only media person here without a cell phone.

Water inside the arena goes for $3.50 a bottle.  Most people are in too much of a hurry to notice the two tents just inside the entry area where corporate sponsors are handing out free bottles of water and, Allah be praised, really amazing fruit smoothies.  I always score a couple of the mango smoothies before I go inside.

Tonight, of course, the place is packed to the rafters.  I find a seat in the nosebleed area, but it’s too hot and stuffy up here.  I get tired of fanning myself with my plastic-wrapped press pass.  We can’t see the stage anyway.   There are television screens mounted near the ceiling for sports events, but they’re all dark for some reason.

The big screen is behind the podium, so the TV networks and the swing state delegations have the best view of it. Tonight I’m determined to actually listen to a bunch of speeches, like all these other poor slobs.  I perch on a ledge in the writing press area and try to focus.  The guy next to me, a syndicated radio talk show host in a yarmulke, is working on an article on parenting on his laptop.  He says that people aren’t made to sit still for this stuff four days in a row.  He’s ready to slam his head into a wall.

My resolve withers.  Somehow I’ve missed Obama’s speech.  He was such a hit, I’ll have to read the hard copy later. The rest of the speakers are all saying fine things, but they tend to be the same things everyone else is saying.   Pretty soon I’m feeling, Okay!  I’ll vote for Kerry!  Shut up now please!

Fortunately we arrive at a musical interlude.  Flags have been distributed so people can wave them for Willie Nelson’s intro.  He sings with a big purple-robed choir.  Three people in the press area are swaying to the music, but I’m getting sixtied-out, myself.  I’ve heard Carole King and Peter, Paul, and Mary, but managed to miss all the musical acts I’d actually like to hear, like Wyclef Jean and the Black-Eyed Peas.

Max Cleland snaps me back to attention.  He lost both legs and an arm fighting in Vietnam, and still the Republicans managed to paint him as soft on defense so he lost his re-election bid for Congress in Georgia.  The Dems have given him a prime spot, introducing Kerry and his “band of brothers”, a phrase I will be heartily sick of in an hour or two.

Cleland sobers the crowd, grounds it, then seems to lift it up again.  He’s not a grand orator.  He just seems…real.

I head for the third level media info area before Kerry takes the stage.  I’m surprised security lets me by.  Maybe I’m flying under the radar at this point.  Sometimes it’s good to be short.

Inside the info room, where dozens of media drones are filing their copy on laptops, a ragtag bunch of reporters, mostly very young, are sitting on the floor watching the speeches on television.  The closed captions are quite entertaining.  I especially like “I am here today through the graves of a higher being.”

I’m fascinated by Kerry’s daughter Alexandra’s speech.  Did we really need the image of her father giving CPR to a hamster?

One of the young reporters notes that the theme of trees seems to run through the Kerry family speeches.  Kerry’s mother taught him that “trees are the cathedrals of nature”.  There he is in the video, climbing a tree.  When his daughter speaks of him making a little wire sculpture with autumn leaves on it for his dying mother, a very sweet story, we look at one another with raised eyebrows.  Again with the trees!  Are we going to have a pagan for president?

I go back up the hall to where it opens onto the floor, and squeeze in by the temporary railing to watch the end of the show.  Here come the balloons, red, white and blue, large, extra-large, and super-sized.  They shower down in spurts, accompanied by a blizzard of confetti in the patriotic color scheme.

Many of the big net tubes by the ceiling that have been holding the balloons for this moment seem to be holding them still.  Oops.  Actually this is probably just as well, because even with a fraction of the balloons falling, the ground is covered with the things.  They slide around, trip people, and pop with little explosions that must be nerve-wracking for security.

I guess that’s all the excitement I can stand for the evening and walk out to the subway a few blocks away.  The moon shines down on the departing crowd.  In two days it will be full, the second full moon in July – what is called a blue moon.  This seems appropriate, since once in a blue moon is how often the Dems are this unified.

There’s a middle-aged, fussy-looking little woman in the T station with a small white dog on a leash.  She is oblivious to the fact that the dog is weaving around at the end of the leash, straining to greet every person it sees whether they want to play or not, making people stop short to keep from stepping on it.

This woman walks up to a policeman and talks to him for several minutes.  It looks to me like she’s obeying the constant refrain on the T’s loudspeakers: “If you see or hear anything suspicious, no matter how small, report it to the authorities.” 

Now I wish I’d gone up to the policeman right after she left him, to report an annoying woman and her annoying little dog.

Postscript

My friend JB, a generous soul, has allowed a couple of dozen protesters from out of town to camp on her suburban lawn.  I talk with two of them on the phone after the convention is over, as they’re preparing to scatter to their home states, trying to find the key to unlock their bicycles, and so on.

Most of the protesters disdained to enter the protest pen, opting instead to perform random acts of spontaneous political expression around town.  This strategy made it difficult to catch them in the act.  I’m curious to hear what I missed.

Chris tells me he’s been a “freelance activist” since Sept. 11, 2001.  He left a master’s program in history for this career, living now on small inheritances from his mother and grandmother, plus the occasional part-time job.

At a protest march last Saturday, two Boston policemen approached him and a friend and engaged them in conversation.  He thinks this was a ruse, to keep them from interfering while two plainclothes officers whisked away a young Southeast Asian man standing nearby.  Chris heard they released this guy a few hours later after questioning him because “he looked suspicious.”

On Wednesday, a group of activists went to the protest pen to stage some street theater on the theme of Abu Ghraib.  Some wore orange suits.  Other activists pretended to arrest them, put them in pens, made them kneel, and put bags over their heads.

Chris says they didn’t have much of an audience besides the folks in real uniforms, but one black man who had just gotten out of the military joined the demonstration.  “He’d been getting frustrated, but he was keeping his mouth shut.  Now he says he’ll be protesting at the RNC.”

Chris notes that the protesters got thumbs-up from some of the police.  The officers didn’t intervene when they burned an effigy with a Bush face on one side of its head and a Kerry face on the other.  But when Chris started to pour some water into several smaller bottles, six policemen came right over.  He drank some of the water to show them he wasn’t making incendiary devices.

I also speak with Jade, which is not his real first name but a nom de protest.  Jade’s been a full-time activist for eight years, since he was 15 years old.  He tells me he’s already been arrested 36 times.  He’s with a group now called Pirates Against Bush.  They wear pirate costumes and masks, and it sounds like they have a great time.

On Sunday, the Pirates couldn’t stay with the main anti-war march because the police wouldn’t let their bikes into the “soft” zone outside the protest pen.  Instead they lay in the grass on the Common, pointing rude signs at the black helicopters overhead.

On Wednesday, Jade made himself a popular guy at a Pirate party after he talked a store manager out of several pounds of Godiva chocolates.

The Pirates did a lot of drumming on buckets this week, hassling television news teams by making noise behind the cameras.  They staged mock sword fights and taunted the LaRouche people, chanting: “Are you cold? Burn the rich! Are you hungry? Eat the rich!”  And other even less savory suggestions.

The fun and games got less fun at one point.  It isn’t clear to me from Jade’s account exactly what happened.  My husband says he saw a news report that blamed a molotov cocktail made out of paper mache.  At any rate, as Jade says, “the craziness started.”  He got hit in the back of the head with a nightstick, and got beaten some more when he tried to stop the police from grabbing another Pirate.

Jade saw police shove one young woman’s face onto the pavement so hard her nose was bleeding.  He himself suffered a broken pinkie.  He thinks three activists were arrested. A friend of his overheard some member of the SWAT team point at Jade and say, “I want him too,” so he told Jade to “run like hell,” which advice he took.  An hour and a half later, when he called his sister in North Carolina, she said policemen had just visited their house, asking her to let them know when Jade returned.

Homeland Security seems to be keeping the world safe from Pirates.  Jade won’t be going home anytime soon.  He’ll hit a few other states and then be in New York at the end of August for the Republican convention.

Jade says he wonders why “outsider youth” like him and his friends seem so much happier than their more mainstream peers.  “Part of it is the freedom of our imaginations,” he surmises.  “Also, we’re never bored. We see things other people ignore, and they entertain us.  They make us laugh.”

I forget to ask him if he’d noticed the Falun Gong.

Fear is a good start

duck and cover

I’ve been scared most of my life: of nuclear war, of hateful prejudice, of environmental destruction. I always wondered why other people weren’t scared too.

Now that so many more people are afraid — of COVID-19, of poverty, of climate catastrophe — I feel better. At last, we are beginning to face the consequences of the way humanity has behaved. That means there’s a chance we can change our behavior.

We have based our culture on greed and violence. This is no way to run a planet. We have been cutting down rainforests, the lungs of the earth, so we can have palm oil and hamburgers. Now the earth is heating up so fast, we’re afraid humanity can’t stay alive on it much longer.

The USA is showing the rest of the world what happens when you refuse to acknowledge reality. Trump insists the virus is a hoax, and basic safety measures are an attack on our freedoms. So hundreds of thousands of Americans are dying. Eventually, we will admit the only way to save our people is to wear masks and maintain distance everywhere we go. Meanwhile we will lose far too many. But we will learn.

The USA is also showing the world how to change the culture. Thanks to huge, nonviolent protests, the Black Lives Matter movement has finally made most Americans aware that racism is another deadly virus we all must fight. Black people have moved from fear to anger, from suffering to action. They have educated and mobilized their allies. This is how we make a difference: we do it together.

So do get afraid, my friends. Just don’t stay that way. This is a beautiful world. Humanity is worth saving: people can be awesomely kind and creative. It’s not individuals who are the problem, even Trump; it’s our cruel and selfish culture. Let’s get together and change it.

Saving ourselves

The US is in such terrible shape that lately, I’ve been writing only about this country. American media almost always do that, which helps to keep us ignorant. They give us the news they think we want to hear rather than what we need to know. Right now, we need to know why so many countries are dealing with COVID-19 so much better than we are.

This little blog is not the place to detail ways other nations are bending the curve and saving the lives of their residents. (One good article that does so is at https://time.com/5851633/best-global-responses-covid-19/) The methods vary, from severe lock-downs to widespread contact tracing. The only thing these nations have in common is that their leaders reacted to the virus quickly with action, generous use of public resources, and consistent messaging.

Of course in the US, our leader knew about the virus two months before he did anything at all. Since then, he has called the virus a hoax, refuses to wear a mask, won’t tell people to take simple precautions, cuts ties to scientists, cuts funds for testing, and keeps pushing states to re-open businesses and schools as though the virus has gone away even though he knows it’s spiking. Trump is killing Americans.

One thing we learn from watching other nations, and even from watching the US states that are keeping cases down, is that people can radically change our behavior when we know we must in order to survive. We change our work patterns, our child care arrangements, our social interactions, the way we shop and entertain ourselves. And we can make these changes literally overnight.

This is good to know. Because we as a species have a lot of changes to make, big changes that have to happen quickly if humanity is to survive. We have to stop using non-biodegradable plastic and fossil fuels, for example. We have to stop cutting down rainforests and start planting billions of trees. Keeping the planet habitable will require people to make much less stuff and use much less energy. This will be hard. But once we know that’s what we have to do, we can do it.

Without sane leadership, Americans are too confused to take effective action. We can begin to change that, this November. Then the real work of saving ourselves must begin.

Freedom: yours vs mine

When people object to the requirement to wear a mask in public, smoke starts coming out of my ears. Freedom comes with responsibility. You are free to risk your own life if you want to. But since when is it okay to risk other people’s lives? If you are free to refuse to wear a mask, you are free to stay the hell away from the rest of us.

Every older American, every person with heart disease or diabetes, is scared right now. We’re scared to leave home. We’re scared of crowds. We don’t go inside anywhere unless we have to. Too many in this country are in denial about COVID-19, encouraged to be stupid by a reckless, ignorant president. Just because we all wish like anything it was over, doesn’t mean it’s over. Has anybody missed seeing the spike on the graph?

You might be young and healthy. Others are not so lucky. Do you think you can be a good person if you endanger people less fortunate than yourself? Do you think other people’s lives mean less to them than yours does to you? Maybe you don’t notice older people or those with disabilities. We are even less visible than usual these days. But we’re here; there are people who love us, and people who depend on us. We want to live just as much as you do. You see going maskless as freedom; we see it as life-threatening.

I’m not just talking about COVID parties, insane though they are. I’m talking about people who walk through neighborhoods with their masks below their noses. I’m talking about bikers and runners wearing masks down around their necks. Nobody likes having to wear them but that’s the best way to control this pandemic. Are you saving that mask for conversations? When you’re exercising, you’re breathing harder than usual. You know you could have no symptoms and be shedding the virus whenever you breathe, right?

Sure, you’re free. Be free like a grownup. Wear the damn mask.

The next crisis

First the US gets three years of Trump ruining everything he touches. Then COVID-19 races through the US while Trump calls it a hoax. States step in to slow the virus; people begin to stay home or wear a mask; Trump pressures Americans to go back to “normal.” People return to work and leave their masks at home or around their necks. The virus spikes again.

An estimated one-quarter to one-half of the American workforce is still unemployed. Millions have lost so much income that even if they’re back at work, they can’t pay the rent. Eviction moratoriums are expiring, which means people are going to get kicked out of their housing. States have little money to help. The Republican Senate is stopping all federal assistance pushed by the Democratic House. Enhanced unemployment checks, which have helped so many survive until now, stop at the end of July.

The USA is about to experience levels of hunger and homelessness not seen in nearly a century. Our president only cares about the kind of people who own several houses and have never missed a meal. Trump might help ordinary people if he thinks he has to do it to win re-election. But who knows what goes on in that big empty head? Whatever nonsense Fox talk-show hosts spouted this morning, that’s what he thinks.

Homelessness became an epidemic in the US when Reagan slashed federal housing programs in 1981. For the first time, we had veterans, newly jobless workers, and families with children living in the streets. Nothing significant has been done since then by either party to help Americans afford housing. Now things will be much worse.

We must elect Democrats this fall. But that’s just a start. So much harm has been done to ordinary American families over the last 40 years that we need to make big changes, not take baby steps. Health care is a human right. Shelter is a human right. All children deserve adult attention and education. If we believe these things, we have a lot of work to do. Once we get a new administration, we must push them hard to the left. The federal government has to stop spending half our money on the military, yank the other half back out of the hands of the billionaires, and instead fund housing, health, and education.

Americans have finally hit the streets in protest. I’m afraid we’ll have to stay there for a while longer.