The Convention

Free Speech Zone

I was making my way onto the convention grounds late Wednesday afternoon when I saw an unusually large congregation of black-clad riot police. I noticed as well that a technician had set up a TV camera such that it faced away from the “security zone” and onto the public street—in fact, just past the gates through which I had entered. I asked the technician what was happening and he said that there was going to be a riot.

The rumor was that the rock band Rage Against the Machine had just finished a performance and then suggested to its 9,000 audience members that they all leave the concert together and march over to the convention. Another man, in army pants and carefully-tucked-in Hawaiian shirt, probably a reporter, closed his cell phone and said with some excitement that the marchers were just a few blocks away. I decided to wait and see what would happen.

By then a second phalanx of riot police had coalesced and other reporters passing through the gates had begun to take notice. We all looked outward. The marchers were believed to be heading down Speer Boulevard, the very street on which we ourselves happened to be standing. Between us and them was a chest-high steel mesh barrier. There were more rumors: The marchers planned to rush the fence; they wanted to incite a police riot; they had stockpiled bags of their own urine to throw at delegates. The reporters waited.

A tall officer in sunglasses told us, politely, that he might have to ask us to move away from the perimeter. A photographer wondered aloud about how to get up higher for a better shot, and another cameraman offered to boost him onto a stoplight, an offer the first photographer declined. “I don’t think the cops would like that,” he said. Other cameramen lounged in lawn chairs atop their satellite trucks, like picnickers before the Battle of Bull Run.

Now no one was allowed to leave, not until more was understood about the potential danger. The riot police created a new security zone by stringing yellow police tape in a line parallel to the outer barrier but set back fifty yards. As promised, the polite officer asked us to step behind the line, for our own safety.

A bucket-lift carrying two elaborately shielded men approached the mesh barrier, as did an armored truck encrusted with an even-more-elaborate hydraulic platform system, atop of which rode another six-man riot squad. A Secret Service man sped to the rear in a golf cart. It was like the flurry of cranes before a freighter pulled into dock.

The protestors came into sight. I could make out a banner, held aloft by two men with flagstaffs, reading “No War on Iran.” More reporters made more cell phone calls. The leaders of the march, it turned out, were veterans of the Iraq war. There were hundreds of them, or dozens, or none. They were followed by all 9,000 members of the Rage Against the Machine audience, or maybe 3,000, or 5,000. The marchers, we heard, filled the entire boulevard for seven full blocks.

And then, before anything could be confirmed, the marchers turned south. They had been persuaded, we learned from the tall officer, to demonstrate lawfully, and lawful demonstration required that they march another full mile, all the way down to the other end of the security zone, and conclude their protest in what the event organizers called the Free Speech Zone. This was a cage between the security zone and the public zone in which protesters were invited to demonstrate their concerns to the gathered delegates of the Democratic Party.

The police pulled the tape back up and the crowd of reporters dispersed, most of them having given up on the prospect of a riot. Bill Clinton would be speaking soon, and it would take fifteen minutes to walk through the vast security zone, from the entrance to the inner security zone where the actual convention was being held, and another thirty minutes to wait in line to have their laptops X-rayed. No more time for protesters.

I wanted to see what would happen at the Free Speech Zone from the inside, but that meant I would have to wait in line as well. I ended up standing next to a lanky, graying reporter whose security badge indicated he was from USA Today. I asked him if anyone had ever used the Free Speech Zone. He didn’t think so. But he had heard that the final location of the Zone was the result of considerable wrangling. The original location was almost completely inaccessible, and local activists had managed to ensure that the new location would be at least somewhat more visible.

This may have been the case, but the new location did not seem to be much of an improvement. I asked several volunteers if they knew where it was located, and none of them did. I finally found it myself by following some riot police to the edge of the security zone.

The Free Speech Zone, it turned out, looked liked the caged-in playground of a 1970’s-era housing project. It was made of the same kind of mesh barriers as the rest of the perimeter, only the barriers were much taller—maybe ten feet—and they had been doubled into parallel walls about four feet apart, like the twin battlements atop a medieval castle. To the right of this cage, which was about the size of three tennis courts, was a large gate, currently sealed. On one side were two dozen riot police, quite relaxed. On the other, just barely in view, the marchers. No one was in the cage. I asked one of the officers what was going on, and he said they refused to enter.

It did seem futile. No delegates were anywhere to be seen. I was the only reporter there. Bill Clinton was about to speak. One young man with a press badge hanging from his neck did approach, but it turned out that he was simply trying to get to the Circle K convenience mart that had the misfortune of being located in the restricted zone. He wanted cigarettes, and so he decided to wait out the demonstration.

I learned later, from a review of the show in the Denver Post, that Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello had called for a non-violent march to end the war. “We’re going right now,” he had said. “We’ll meet you outside.” Also present, according to the Post, was Ron Kovick, the Vietnam veteran who had written Born on the Fourth of July, who said to the audience, “We will bring the troops home, and we will do this nonviolently, in the spirit of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela.”

A volunteer driving a trash cart paused to consider the situation. His youth and shaggy demeanor suggested that he might be on the side of anarchy and/or peace, but in fact he was disdainful. He looked at the meandering crowd and said, “All of them should go out and try making some money and then do something.” Then he drove off.

The protesters, for their part, seemed completely defeated. Someone had set up a microphone at a podium inside the cage and the protesters were invited inside to make speeches. I tried to listen, but I was kept so far back by the police that I couldn’t make out any of the words. The tone of the speeches became rambling, though, and at one point someone launched into a poor take on “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.”

Things were falling apart. Two giant men wearing corrections officer badges and biker mustaches ambled by. I asked if the protest was over and one of them said he thought so. I asked what happened. The other one said he wasn’t sure, but he had heard that the organizers and the police had finally struck a bargain, involving bottled water and free passes on the light rail.

And that was all that happened. At the beginning of this non-riot, however, I did overhear the following exchange between one of the reporters, who happened to be wearing a loud sports coat, and one of the black-clad riot officers—an exchange, I promise you, that was entirely sincere.

Reporter: You look good today.

Riot Officer: So do you.

Pause.

Riot Officer: Hey, I have that exact same jacket!

Undecideds

No more than a few hundred Hillary marchers were winding their way toward the Pepsi Center Tuesday morning, a few hours before their champion would sweep to the podium. Having read and heard a great deal of speculation about their intentions, I was interested to meet some of them in person.

The first one I approached, a gray-haired woman wearing a “TeamHillary” shirt, was waiting with a few friends as a TV crew prepared to interview her. Her apparent willingness to answer questions encouraged me to lead on the blunt side. “Do you know John McCain’s position on abortion, contraception, and the Court?”

“I sure do, and I’m for it, and for him,” she snapped back.

Just behind her was a sixtyish couple who, it turned out, did not support Hillary at all; they were only tagging along. Whom would they vote for? “Bob Barr, or the Constitution Party guy. Not McCain or Obama.” Why? “They’re both wrong on the issues. The big issue is that the border has to be sealed. All these illegals are killing us.”

I took my leave. Next up was Corina Aragon, a state delegate from Colorado, who was sitting on a bench sitting and holding a Hillary sign in front of her. She seemed wounded but somehow placid. She explained to me that Obama had, earlier in the campaign, said that if Hillary won the nomination, his supporters should not support her. She seemed sincere in her belief that this had happened, but even so, now she was reconciled and on-message. Hillary had told the Hispanic Caucus Monday morning that they should work as hard for Obama as they had worked for her. That was enough. When I told her about the TeamHillary faker I’d just run into, she confided that she herself had just seen three TV crews vying to interview another such Republican. This appalled her.

What did she make, I asked, of Hillary supporters who claimed not to know that John McCain is relentlessly anti-abortion? “They have to know,” she said, sighing. When she moved her sign, I saw that she was wearing a huge Obama button.

Aragon’s friend, Susan Stewart, had been for Obama from the beginning. What did she think was going on with the Hillaryites? “I doubt they know what they’re doing,” she said, adding that she’s a mental-health professional.

A minute later, Adela Solis from San Antonio told me she might vote for McCain. He would be contained by a Democratic Congress. What about abortion rights, I asked? “He’s lukewarm about that.” I begged to differ. McCain did go wobbly once, in 1999, the last time he reinvented himself, but otherwise he has been consistently opposed to abortion. “Abortion is important, sure,” Solis said, “but it’s not the only thing. McCain’s spent his career being an independent—not on all issues, but that’s what he’s known for.” Which was hard to dispute.

Another woman, younger, said she hadn’t decided how to vote. What was she waiting for? “I want Obama to say that he appreciates what Hillary has done.” She did not think this an unreasonable demand. The pure voice of identity politics spoke to her sweetly.

In the afternoon, I ran into another TeamHillary group on a downtown street. One of them had wrapped a sweatshirt around her waist that was emblazoned with PUMA, which is understood, with a wink, to mean both “People United Means Action” and “Party Unity My Ass.” (The rumor was that longtime Hillary supporter James Carville had taken to wearing Puma brand sneakers in solidarity with this fake movement.) I asked her if she cared about McCain’s views on abortion. “I’m for McCain,” she shot back. “I don’t know his position and I don’t care!”

I cast journalistic distance aside. How, I asked with no doubt unseemly intensity, could she be indifferent? Didn’t the issue matter? “Who cares what you think?” she said. “You men are always telling us what to think about abortion!”

All of this preceded Hillary’s speech Tuesday, in which she explained to her followers why they should unite behind Barack Obama in unambiguous terms: “Those are the reasons I support Barack Obama,” she said. “And those are the reasons you should, too.” The audience roared, as they did when she declared, “No way, no how, no McCain,” and again when she likened the Twin Cities Republican convention site to the twin worldviews of George Bush and John McCain. I was standing next to the Ohio delegation, which included several conspicuous TeamHillaryites. They were ecstatic.

And yet, afterward, by those weirdly binding filiations that string journalists into packs—and despite even the grave approval of the pundits—the story of Hillary diehards bolting the party remained the obsessive focus of the cable news networks. Directly after the speech, for instance, CNN decided to feature a Hillary delegate who, through deep sobs, said that Hillary had given a speech so “presidential” that it was all the more grievous that she wasn’t the nominee. A longtime Democratic loyalist, she never thought she’d find herself needing to be wooed more. But she did. It all depended on Obama, but she couldn’t quite say how. In the meantime, for those seeking solace in a lost cause, CNN would have to do.

Big Party

Politics has never been severed from pageantry, and it cannot be. It was for good reason that kings and pashas installed their thrones in high-ceilinged rooms covered in gilt and arabesques, why they displayed gaudy coats of arms and their armies raised banners. To impress themselves upon their subjects in rooms furnished with majesty was one of their central requirements. Majesty was convertible to authority, which in turn was convertible to power.

There was something in these displays for commoners, too. An audience with great and grand power must have felt, for a moment at least, like the opening of a window out of confinement. If a momentary taste of palatial glory was the only taste the subjects ever received, it was all the more glorious for its rarity—this the monarch quickly discovered.

Politics everywhere involves pageantry, then. But the United States threw open the gates to special, gaudy adventures in pageantry. It aspired from its inception to democratize the spectacle of power. If the idea of the new nation was to inspire millions with the belief, deluded or not, that by right they had a place in that spectacle, what better way than to afford them rites of participation? Not principle alone drove the American Revolution, not even interests alone, but the rewards of the common experience and display of solidarity. The Boston Tea Party was not only an interference with despised trade, it also was a costume party.

The historian Michael McGerr notes in The Decline of Popular Politics that Election Day was not always a free-standing outpost of politics, preceded by private life and followed by more private life. It was the culmination of days of pageantry. Thousands of men paraded through town for days, carrying banners, shouting slogans, carousing, singing, and drinking. The pageant mobilized citizens by exciting them. In nineteenth-century America, the citizens who attended debates hooted and cheered. Look at any edition of the Lincoln–Douglas debates and you’ll see transcriptions of the heckling, too.

It has become customary to deplore the ritualization of party conventions. No longer are there real contests with multiple ballots and the possibility of surprises, as in 1956, when Adlai Stevenson allowed the delegates to freely choose his vice-president. As we all know, conventions have become scripted, the speeches more contrived, the roll-calls scarcely thrilling. In television terms, this is drama without climax. Accordingly, the networks have cut back their coverage, a decision few if any critics lament.

This is my first time inside a party convention hall, though I did spend several sweaty, scary, heady, tear-gas-soaked days in Chicago forty years ago. But after one day in Denver, I have a different idea about what a convention is for. It’s a rally of people who are, like it or not, oddballs—citizens who care about the fate of their country and believe that partisan politics provides a way for them to influence that fate. It’s a reunion; an occasion for gossiping, social climbing, reconnoitering, and drinking. The delegates smile at one another, shake hands, make friends, and who knows who or what else. They dress up for one another and feel as though this sometimes contentious, sometimes abstract party is theirs. The New York Times may think they’re silly to believe this, but they believe it nevertheless.

Of course, the party aims to showcase the candidates, to brand itself, to put on a show for the people at home. This they must do. But the sustaining point, really, is the pageantry. The convention is the time when the whole national party exists.

Clowns

A drama from Fox News. The scene: the Pepsi Center, site of the Democratic National Convention, last Sunday afternoon.

Fox News Reporter Griff Jenkins: (Wading into crowd of protestors) What’s your message? What are you upset about?

Masked Protestor 1: I’m upset about everything.

Masked Protestor 2: Fuck corporate media!

Griff Jenkins: (Aside) Well, I guess they don’t believe in freedom of speech. Let’s just work this crowd and see who we can talk to.

Griff Jenkins: (Reading sign) Defend Denver. Explain that to me. What does that mean?

Man in Sunglasses: I’m not going to talk to you.

Griff Jenkins: What’s that?

Man in Sunglasses: I said I’m not going to talk to you.

Griff Jenkins: Do you believe in freedom of speech?

Junior Melendez: End the war!

Griff Jenkins: What’s your name? Come here! What’s your name?

Junior Melendez: My name is Junior Melendez and fuck war!

Griff Jenkins: Come on, that isn’t necessary! If you have a message . . .

Voice Offstage: Fuck you!

Griff Jenkins: (Continuing) If you have a message . . . Do you have an actual message without cursing? What’s your message?

Man with Goatee: Stop the torture. Stop the war.

Griff Jenkins: Stop the torture. Stop the war. Do you not believe in freedom? Do you not believe . . .

All, Except Jenkins: Fuck Fox News! Fuck Fox News! Fuck Fox News!

(Curtain)

These sorts of dramas happen all the time, of course. The Griff Jenkinses put on their make-up and taunt the candidates or the protestors or the guys-just-like-you into some kind of broadcast-quality entertainment and that’s the business.

This particular moment is worth noting, though, because the protestors, organized by a group called Recreate 1968, seem to have decided that playing along with the clown act is not conducive to their own clearly stated goals. (“Stop the torture. Stop the war.”)

They don’t offer the majestic dignity of other clown-show resistors, say from the era of civil rights resistance. But they do bring a rare contempt into play, which is its own form of dignity, one that must perhaps precede the calmer varieties.

The Recreate 68 organizers note on their web site that they do not aim to recreate the police riot that took place at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. What they aim to recreate, rather, is a time when Americans forced their leaders, by way of protest and grassroots organization, to live up to their democratic rhetoric: “That in 2008 the two leading candidates for the Democratic nomination for president are an African American man and a woman—something unimaginable at the start of the sixties—is a direct result of the changes brought about in that decade.” Which seems indisputable, no matter how much the sixties themselves are portrayed now as a clown show.

The first step toward that kind of participation, in fact, is to stop pretending politics is a clown show. That is a media conceit, after all, and one that is fairly easy to undermine.

In 1967, for instance, a proto-Griff named Alan Burke invited the activist/prankster Peter Berg on to his talk show to explain his message to the folks at home. Instead, Berg decided to bring the viewers themselves into the drama. He had a plant in the audience, armed with a clownish pie, and when another audience member got up to ask “what young people stood for these days,” he creamed that questioning innocent square in the face.

Having broken one version of the fourth wall, Berg then tried to break another. He began a lecture about the unreal nature of television itself, about the need for direct engagement. (This was nearly a decade before Network had come out.) “This is how you get out of the box,” he said. “You stand up—and you at home can join me in this—stand up, and start walking to get out of the box. Now here I go now. Just keep the camera on me and I’ll keep walking.” He walked to the studio exit, opened the door, and looked into the camera. Then he said, “Now turn off your television sets and go to bed,” and walked out the door.

This may have been pretentious. In fact it was pretentious. But most attempts at dignity are pretentious, until they succeed.

An editorial note: The story about Peter Berg is from Todd Gitlin’s definitive history, The Sixties. And for the next week, Todd, who knows much about dignified protest and other topics as well, will be writing occasional dispatches from Denver for Harpers.org, for which we thank him.