DNC 2016: ASK ME.
EXPECT NOTHING
Thom Nickels
CW
The Democratic National
Convention is now history. City streets are quieter, the traffic less daunting,
and there’s finally a sense of being able to breathe easy. Though a national
convention may be good for a city’s PR image, sometimes for residents the going
can get rough. An overcrowded Frankford Market El and Broad Street
But on Monday, July 24, the
first day of the convention, expectations were bright. That’s when I headed to
the Jill Stein for President Green Party protest in front of City Hall and got
an eye full. This protest reminded me of the Occupy Philly protests a few years
ago and of certain demonstrations I participated in the early 1970s. I will
always feel a connection to grassroots protest even as some of my political
views evolve.
The Green Party’s ‘Power to the
People’ 2016 platform is attractive enough. The Green vision it to end world
poverty, put a moratorium on pesticides and institute community control of the
police rather than the other way around. The Greens also want to terminate
unconstitutional surveillance on American citizens. These are noble goals.
I remember what happened to
the Greens in 2008 when their presidential ticket, Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala
were arrested and handcuffed to a chair for 8 hours for attempting to
participate in the Hofstra University Obama-Romney debate. Stein and Honkala
should have been included in that debate.
Thirty years ago presidential debates were sponsored by the League of
Women Voters. That’s when any third party presidential candidates on the ballot
in enough states were invited to debate the Republican and Democratic nominee
for president.
In 1988, the League withdrew
its sponsorship of presidential debates because of the demands of the two party
system. League President Nancy M. Neuman said at that time that “the demands of
the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter,”
and that “the candidates’ organizations aim to add debates to their list of
campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and honest answers to
tough questions.”
It was fascinating to hear
Stein supporter Chris Hedges from Truthdig and then observe the Green
protestors (of all ages), some of whom were in costume, like the woman dressed
as Hillary, the Queen of Death (based
on Hillary’s reputation as an interventionist with a fondness for starting
foreign wars).Large Green Party flags fluttered in the afternoon breeze as
activists from the 60s chanted the same chants anti war protestors chanted
during Vietnam War sit ins.
I heard lots of ‘up’ talk in
the crowd about Bernie pulling a fast one during the convention. No, he would
not capitulate to the corporate Clinton
A band of youthful drummers
caught my attention with the following chant:
Communist Revolution is the only
solution
The Communist Revolution wrecked havoc in Russia
While we’re at it, let’s not
forget this pro-revolution maxim from Thomas Jefferson: “If you discourage
mutiny and riot what check is there on government?”
Green Party dress was decidedly downtrodden and raw; frumpy shorts,
pigtails askew, shredded baseball caps, pony tails and the occasional
‘culturally appropriated’ dreadlocks on tall thin activist white men (some of
whom had a man bun on top of the dreads). Unfortunately for the Greens, the
numbers of protestors were not large enough to shut down the DNC at Wells
Fargo, the original goal of the march. Whole
Earth Catalog style post hippie costumes, floppy hats and black anarchist
flags would never win over America
Next stop on my list was the
Wells Fargo building. I had my US Secret Service photo ID badge and my green
Arena pass around my neck. A green Arena pass got you inside the Arena but not
inside the actual Hall where you could sit down and watch the convention. Most
press organizations sans big names like The
New York Times had green Arena passes. Monday night, being the first night
of the DNC, the ASK ME volunteers were quite liberal in allowing green ID press
into the seating area, but green press passes were essentially useless unless
one enjoyed standing for hours, or sitting on the Arena floor like a homeless
person in front of 7/11. The DNC was quite stingy in its allotment of Hall
press passes. In some ways it seemed to me that the ASK ME volunteers had it
better than credentialed press.
I sat in the upper tiers in
the Hall Monday night with my green pass. I was behind the stage so I only saw
the backs (and behinds) of Paul Simon, Al Franken, Elizabeth Warren, Michelle
Obama and Bernie Sanders. Two hipster DC
online publishers who told me they were conservative libertarians sat beside
me. Most of the press did not applaud or cheer the speakers although when
Bernie Sanders mounted the podium, very few people did not lean forward in
their seats.
Before each speech, DNC pages
distributed banners and signs with a slogan or the name of the next speaker.
This was for the benefit of the television audience. Generally, journalists
attending political conventions do not show support for candidates, so the
props offered by the pages went nowhere in the press section although a few
newbie reporters from college newspapers scooped them up, causing one of the
libertarian editors to remark, “Those kid reporters don’t know what they’re
doing.”
On Monday night there didn’t
seem to be many American flags on the floor. For some people this may not be an
important matter, but it did catch the eye of certain conservatives like writer
Tammy Baldwin, who noted, “Americans notice things like no American flags on
the DNC convention stage. It might be small to some people, but it’s a
statement…. After criticism mounted, they added them the second night…” The
lack of flags was more than amply made up for by a double tsunami of balloons,
some as large as beach balls and small planets, that fell from the ceiling like
a plague of locusts over the Clinton-Kaine team during the convention’s closing
moments.
Viewers watched as the Clinton
I found much to admire in the
behavior of Bernie Sanders supporters. Some of them came dressed in funny hats,
capes and motorcycle gear. The emotional build up to Sanders’ speech had all
the tension of a Wagnerian opera. Bernie, however, still had many detractors.
Charles Hunt of The Washington Times,
wrote: “During his quarter-century in
Congress, Mr. Sanders has been viewed as something of a gadfly with
Tourette’s syndrome. Always dressed like a homeless person shambling along the
hallways, Democrats felt sorry for him and let him into their meetings. He
looked like he needed a cup of coffee and free danishes.”
Well, whoever said that
politics was charitable?
On Thursday evening, the night
of Hillary’s speech, there were far fewer Sanders supporters on the floor.
Hillary’s ‘Stronger Together Crowd’ was out in force: lots of women in black
men’s suits and “Planned Parenthood’ bob cut hair dos.
I got a taste of the
privileged political class when I went up the wrong escalator on Hillary night
and wound up in a high donor area with special cocktail lounges and restaurant
skyboxes serving crab, lobster and cherry filled Manhattans. Culinary security
was out in force, so I did not get in. All in all, there were five intense
security check points one had to go through before arriving in the Hall.
On Hillary night, Monday’s
generous press pass atmosphere had disappeared. Ask Me volunteers were now
guarded the Hall gateways like 1950s Communist border guards. I tried to
negotiate a seat several times, but failed.
I made do with touring the (so
called) food courts, and noticed right away that Wells Fargo wasn’t doing the
Democrats any favors: small bottled water sold for 4.50 a bottle, and a slice
of pizza was double that.
When the “enough is enough”
alarm sounded within me, I left for home and watched Hillary’s acceptance
speech online.
