BOSTON — It has been well noted that the “free speech” area at
this year’s Democratic Convention is not all that free. In fact, it
looks like the DNC hired a sadomasochistic interior designer for
their protest needs. Walking into the area from the back side feels
like stepping into a post-apocalyptic action movie.
A low hanging green support beam is the demarcation line between
the well-rehearsed insanity of the official proceedings outside and
the approved dissent inside. Somebody has spray-painted “Watch your
head” on the bar in orange, and after ducking in you are standing
under spirals of hanging razor wire. When the breeze shakes the
wire, reflected shards of shimmering light create a strobe
effect.
This nightmare tunnel dumps into the zone itself, where you are
greeted by several signs, among them: “Mr. Kerry, Tear Down This
Wall!” “Kerry=Bush=Hitler” and “Cages are for Animals.” Honestly,
I’d rather be in a cage with wild animals than a bunch of
anarchists. Animals don’t wear bandanas menacingly across their
faces or carry megaphones to scream at you.
“Don’t give the pigs an excuse!” one young man was shouting.
“They want an excuse to beat you, hurt you, and jail you!”
I’m afraid I’m not even baptized, so my suggestions carry no
weight with the powers-that-be, but the Vatican should look into
canonizing some of the cops who had to deal with these miscreants.
I know many of these officers have foul mouths and are probably
guilty of the normal run of human failings, but the restraint they
showed was nothing short of miraculous.
Masked boys and girls got inches from their face bellowing,
“That’s right! Protect your wall of fascism! Nice work! The wall is
safe while the Constitution is in the toilet! You’re some public
servant!” and lived to tell the tale.
GOD BLESS FREEDOM of speech, but these folks came to make trouble,
not a point. The Seattle riots have been romanticized,
internalized, and for disaffected youth, resistance has become a
rite of passage.
Standing in a government-designated pen is not very romantic, so
the younger, self-respecting protesters soon slinked out of the
sanctioned protest area, ceding it almost entirely to anti-abortion
protesters who know they’ll be pretty much ignored anywhere they go
in Boston this week.
Soon a group of 40 or so masked protesters were harassing
delegates trying to get into the convention, circling them,
shouting that Kerry was a war-mongering Nazi. Then the chant
started up: “Vote Kerry, vote Bush, you get no solutions! Fight for
the communist revolution!” Others in orange jumpsuits sat in wire
cages, demanding the release of Guantanamo Bay prisoners. Many
railed against Zionism and Israel, some waving Palestinian
flags.
There is a restraining factor working against the protesters
here that is even more of a deterrent than the police and walls:
the media. Finally, we serve a useful purpose! Everywhere 50
protesters swarm, 100 folks with cameras, microphones and notebooks
descend on them. The reporters do things so maddening that even the
will of an anarchist cannot hold up in the face of it.
One of the reporters’ favorite tricks, in a strange mimic of
Jeopardy!, is to rephrase protesters’ signs in the form of
a question. Example: A sign reads, “KERRY-BUSH: Not A Dime’s Worth
of Difference.” Reporters swoop in. “Do you believe there is any
difference between George Bush and John Kerry?” one asks. “Exactly
how much difference is there between George Bush and John Kerry?”
another follows up. “Do you think George Bush and John Kerry are
much more alike than either party will admit?” a third wonders. The
protester’s eyes glaze over. Soon he only wants to return home and
be with his video games.
I began to understand why the Department of Defense embedded
reporters in Iraq. They should send them to all the world’s
hotspots and bore the terrorists to death.
IN MID-EPIPHANY, a twentysomething guy ran toward me with a
megaphone. He was wearing a T-shirt that depicted row after row of
gravestones with the caption, “We’ve Found New Homes for the
Rich.”
“A couple years from now maybe you’ll understand what happened
here,” he shouted at me. “Keep drooling. Keep buying what they’re
selling. You know how many kids died of diarrhea today? Huh?”
“Um, nope,” I said.
“Ten thousand!” he screamed. “But that’s alright. Sandy Berger’s
the enemy, right?”
Bored, I walked away, and he no doubt took his megaphone to go
look for other reporters to harass. With 15,000 or so ink-stained
wretches wandering the city in search of a story, that shouldn’t be
too hard.
Of course, some protesters have started to figure out that we’re
starved for interesting copy and decided that they might be able to
use this. Yesterday morning as I left my hotel, for example, a
convertible with two young, pierced ladies pulled up to the curb,
and shouted for me to come over. Believe it or not, this is a
pretty rare occurrence for me, so I walked over a bit
nervously.
As I got to the car, a man in a giant carrot suit sat bolt
upright in the seat, and told me he was running for president. I
was given a pamphlet. His name is Chris P. Carrot and his running
mate is an ear of corn. “Look at me and you’ll see,” he said. “I
hold no bias for or against black, white, or yellow.”
This carrot, it turns out, works for PETA, and is pushing a 28th
amendment to the Constitution requiring that we “treat animals with
kindness and respect” and that we “make restitution to our Native
American animal citizens who had their lands taken from them.”
“I have found the weapons of mass destruction, and they are in
your kitchen drawer,” Carrot writes. “America, we need to remove
the terror from the kitchen table!”
LATER, WALKING THROUGH Faneuil Hall in search of lunch I was
enveloped in a sea of yellow shirts. I soon figured out that I was
in the center of 400 practitioners of Falun Gong. An old Chinese
woman handed me the same pamphlet over and over again. Each time
she cackled, revealing a mouth free of teeth. “Take more,” she
said, over and over again.
I followed them to a park where there was an even more intense
concentration of yellow. As some protesters went through the slow,
meditative practices of their religion, others made angry speeches
about the repression of the Chinese government.
Oh, and the Lyndon LaRouche folks were there hawking “Children
of Beast Man III,” their autobiography of the “anti-Christ” Dick
Cheney. Most people were ignoring them, but then some shouting
broke out. Two girls in Dennis Kucinich shirts were going at it
with two LaRouchies.
I bought some popcorn and a Coke while I watched. If only we
could move this over to the protest cage, I thought.
