A
Week at the RNC: Inside and Out
By
MARK ENGLER
It was the largest demonstration in
American history ever to greet a national political convention.
On Sunday, as the Republicans prepared to launch a week-long
media extravaganza in Madison Square Garden, over 400,000 protesters,
blanketing two miles of Manhattan's avenues, stole the Party's
spotlight. It was a quake whose aftershocks were felt in dozens
of smaller actions throughout the following days. As an opening
reception it announced that there would be two beats during the
week of convention, one covering the speeches made inside the
auditorium and one covering the outraged New York that lay beyond.
I had worried in the weeks
before, as the police stoked fear and the mayor denied permits,
that turnout for Sunday's demonstration would be low. New York
residents and visiting counter-delegations alike put my worries
at ease. The march's banner, "The World Says No to the Bush
Agenda," was broad enough to unite a wide array of anti-Bush
voters and activists opposing the continued occupation of Iraq.
Walking on that sunny afternoon, I saw marchers' emotions range
from angry to hopeful and resolute. I saw demeanors span from
irreverent to solemn. "Yee-Haw is not a Foreign Policy,"
said one sign. "Victims of Terror Are Not Campaign Props,"
said another. One man carried an "Electoral Map of the World"
with a few places like Texas, Saudi Arabia, and Australia marked
as red states; the remaining globe was covered in a sea of blue.
To my mind, a procession of
1,000 coffins formed the most impressive part of the assembly.
Nine hundred and sixty symbolic caskets draped with American
flags represented U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, and 40 more in
simple black remembered all the others who have died in the occupation.
At the end of the march, I sat on a curb and watched for twenty
minutes as the pallbearers slowly paced by.
That evening, I flipped through
the television news coverage. Stories of the protest led on all
of the major networks. NBC's top feature showed the march of
coffins and profiled anti-war military families in the demonstration
who had lost sons and daughters in Iraq. Following that story,
the images in the program's remaining segments seemed to carry
new meaning: a shot of Dick Cheney inspecting the staging at
Madison Square Garden; scenes of delegates on their way to a
Broadway show. Before the march, some had predicted that Republicans
would use footage of protests, rarely popular with the electorate,
to advance their own agenda. If this was the case, one thousand
coffins was clearly not what Karl Rove had in mind.
*
* *
On Monday, I went as a journalist
to the Garden to interview delegates. The Republicans were generally
warm and enthusiastic about speaking with me, even though I forthrightly
indicated I was writing for a leftist audience. Butch Davis,
a delegate from Houston, Texas, offered this message for progressives:
"Reexamine what you believe." He said, "If you
do believe in socialism, if you believe in gay marriage, if you
believe in higher taxes, then stay a Democrat. If you don't believe
in those, you're welcome to come on over."
He then explained to me Hillary
Clinton's socialist politics: "She wrote the book, It Takes
A Village. So her concept is that mother and father don't raise
the child, government raises the child, society raises the child.
She's socialistic from the word 'go.'"
He showed such high spirits;
I felt sorry to inform Butch Davis that, as much as I might wish
otherwise, Hillary Clinton is not a socialist.
I have heard many stories of
progressives, even longtime critics of the Democratic Party,
being thoroughly charmed upon meeting Bill Clinton. I had never
heard a parallel story about George W. Bush's interpersonal powers
until Hershelle Kann, an ex-Democrat from Bay Shore, Long Island,
told me about meeting the president at a Washington gala. Ms.
Kann described the encounter:
"I said, 'It is a pleasure
shaking your hand, Mr. Bush. And I want you to know that I am
a Democrat who is voting for you this year.'
"He said to me, 'You're
an American. You're an American.'"
She continued, "There's
a warmth, caring, and respect that he has for Americans... all
of us. He's a deeply religious man who loves his family. He loves
this country. He's one of the people."
As a New York Republican, Hershelle
Kann disagreed with the president on gay rights, on gun control,
and on stem cell research. She was in the minority. Those I spoke
with inside the convention represented a corps of militantly
conservative foot soldiers, steadfast in their belief that tax
cuts were equitable and that weapons of mass destruction will
yet be found, in Syria if not in Iraq. This divide was replicated
in the convention as a whole. While moderates like Arnold Schwarzenegger
and Rudolph Giuliani spoke in prime time, the likes of Rick Santorum
and Trent Lott spent days shaping one of their Party's most conservative
platforms ever. A headline in The New York Times read, "Party
Centrists Find Places on Stage, but not on Agenda"
To be fair, the Democrats also
play to the center. Facing an Electoral Collage in which the
representatives of swing states are the only ones left who matter,
the Kerry campaign has put on its most moderate face. The language
used at the two party conventions was often identical. As I was
talking with delegates, a speaker on the podium, a Republican
Congressional hopeful, railed against the "politics of fear,"
presumably pursued by the Democrats. "We believe in the
politics of hope," he said.
Whatever the similarity in
rhetoric, however, there is a difference in the parties' posturing.
An anti-war plank did not make it onto the Democrat's platform.
Democratic National Committee chair Terry McAuliffe took pains
to disavow the convention protesters. The opposition party has
largely internalized its centrism. The Republicans have not.
Their world view constricts even the possibility of resistance.
Hillary Clinton (Yale Law) and John Kerry (Skull and Bones) embody
socialism, while George W. Bush (Skull and Bones) stands as a
patriotic man of the people. The only direction to go is right.
* * *
Outrage at the Bush administration
in New York ran not only deep, but wide. For every cocktail party,
pro-life breakfast, or black-tie fundraiser that the Republican
delegates soaked up during the week, there was a march, a poetry
reading, or a civil disobedience somewhere in the city challenging
their agenda. This year, New York's Central Labor Council cancelled
its Labor Day parade and opted instead for an anti-Bush rally
on Wednesday. Union members filled seven blocks of Eighth Avenue--the
same ground where there was a spirited march of 20,000 two days
before, organized by community-based organizations including
the New York City AIDS Housing Network, Make the Road by Walking,
and Mothers on the Move.
At the labor rally, among the
teachers, health care attendants, hotel workers, janitors, and
ironworkers was actor James Gandolfini--better known as Tony
Soprano. His address to the crowd suggested that he will not
be voting Republican this year: "I just wanted to say, I
can't tell you how mad I am at these people who are in our city.
I can't tell you how mad I am that I have to walk around like
a rat in a little maze to get somewhere."
The caging of dissent--the
NYPD's infamous, and ubiquitous, protest pens--formed only part
of the problem. As much as the pundits tried to make the week
a re-staging of 1968, it was not. Even Tuesday, "A31,"
a day reserved for more radical direct action, organizers overwhelmingly
announced their intention to adhere to nonviolent civil disobedience.
As it turned out, police would not allow them the opportunity
to act at all. The New York Times described "a near-zero
tolerance policy for activities that even suggest the prospect
of disorder."
Mere suggestion became a crime.
The police arrested nearly 1,000 people on Tuesday alone, a large
number of them "preemptively." On 42nd Street, three
people told by the police that they could hold a banner on the
steps of the public library (but not hang it on one of the library's
famous stone lions) were quickly arrested for holding a banner
on the steps of the public library. A half dozen scruffy-looking
bystanders were grabbed as well. Leaving from Ground Zero, some
three hundred people in a march led by the War Resisters League
and School of the Americas Watch--having been told that they
could march on the sidewalk, two by two, in remembrance of victims
of war and terror--were promptly arrested for walking down the
sidewalk, two by two.
My own group, which included
the two-year old daughter of a friend, would have been rounded
up and arrested in the procession from Ground Zero had we been
just a few places further up in line. Instead, we were pushed
back with the rest of the crowd. As we watched the arrests, I
spoke with Don Peterson, a Republican conventioneer at the site.
He took the position that, if the police are arresting them,
the demonstrators must have done something wrong. This is American
justice. "If you don't like it," he told me, "then
sue them."
*
* *
I went back to the convention
on Wednesday and Thursday night to listen to the speeches. Being
present in those stands was a profoundly alienating experience.
More than hearing distortions presented as fact, it was watching
first hand the dancing on the convention floor and sitting through
the standing ovations that brought home for me a sense that the
pageant could have dire consequences. The veneer of friendly
disagreement that characterized my personal interactions with
the delegates had evaporated. As the speakers talked about the
people whom they were "empowering," I could no longer
accept that they acted on noble intentions. I knew I was surrounded
by adversaries, and I sat uneasily among them.
At their convention, the Democrats
largely refrained from attacking the president, lest they be
labeled hateful Bush-bashers. The Republicans pulled no such
punches. While I support John Kerry's candidacy as the best option
for progressives in this election, I have never signed up for
his fan club. Nor have I been awed by him personally. I once
watched him speak on the campaign trail and left the event feeling
less optimistic about the Democrat's prospects for victory than
when I had arrived.
My feelings about Kerry changed
somewhat during this convention. I saw the way in which speakers
invoked his name with revulsion, the way they enumerated his
failings without fear of ever being held to account. ("He
voted for tax hikes 98 times," said the Republican Governor
of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, while his Lt. Governor, deploying
a new set of implausible numbers, charged that Kerry "voted
against tax cuts for American families 121 times.") I sat
by myself, feeling isolated, watching the bullies at work, and
I grew to like the junior Senator from Massachusetts a good deal
more than I had before.
Earlier in the week, President
Bush caused a wave of media fanfare by indicating that he did
not think the war on terror could be won. Within a day, he flipped
back on the question. But in that revealing moment, as well as
in some subsequent "clarifications," Bush and his handlers
confirmed an unsettling truth: That, if given the opportunity,
the hawks will pursue a perpetual war, a war spanning generations.
"The president was not signaling a change in policy,"
White House officials assure us.
On Thursday night, I listened
to President Bush invoke his "compassionate conservatism."
He promised to transform "our most fundamental systems--the
tax code, health coverage, pension plans, worker training."
And he vowed to stay "on the offensive" militarily.
The audience roared.
After the speech, I walked
out onto 32nd street. There was a protest a few blocks away and
a candlelight vigil in Union Square. I remembered the electoral
map of the world. If it was dispiriting to feel small and isolated
among the Republicans, it is heartening to remember that, in
a larger sense, it is the Republicans who sit isolated among
us. The majority of humanity opposes George W. Bush, just as
the majority of this nation voted against him. The thought made
me feel better for a while. Then I remembered the coffins, and
I thought of the work that we have before us.
Mark Engler, a writer based in New York City,
can be reached via the web site http://www.DemocracyUprising.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
Keep
CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home
/ subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /