NEW YORK — In Manhattan’s East Village, where I live, the
approach of the Republican convention could be gauged in the
increasing number of residents wearing anti-Bush T-shirts, buttons,
and the like. The neighborhood has long been known for radical
activism, and Bush voters are about as common as common sense.
Being an East Villager, I didn’t feel a great need to see the
Left’s protest march to Madison Square Garden on Sunday afternoon.
That’s because I knew I’d get enough of the event’s flavor without
having to tread uptown. So I walked a few blocks west to Union
Square, traditional home of radical activists, and took in some of
the sights.
The remarkable thing about the Left is that the character and
form of their demonstrations never really change. There are certain
things you can almost always count on at these gatherings.
You can count, first of all, on drums. The Left loves drums,
possibly because they conjure up tribal, Third World associations,
but also, I suspect, because of their paramilitary aspect. And
drums are noisy, too, which increases the likelihood that they will
annoy others and disturb the peace. A Leftist demo without drums is
like a boxing match without blood.
You can usually count on puppet shows or some other form of
performance art. Many of the folks on the radical left are
frustrated artists, and this is their chance to shine. The puppet
show I saw at Union Square Sunday had something to do with Bush,
God, and the creation of the universe, but it was so incoherent
even by the standards I use to judge these things that I did not
stay to watch the end. Instead, I moved off to some of the vending
tables.
You can always count on vendors selling buttons, T-shirts,
books, and the like. You can count on the prices being exorbitant,
and you can count on overhearing some young innocent complain while
walking away, “Isn’t it capitalist to sell these things, even if
the cause is just?”
You can count on political incoherence, like the table set up to
gather signatures against H.R. bill 163 and Senate bill 89, to
reinstate the draft. This was the bill introduced nearly two years
ago by Congressmen Charles Rangel of Harlem. Nothing has been done
on it since it was introduced in January of 2003, and nothing will
be. But the man at the table talked about it as if it were an
imminent threat. I wonder if he knew that the bill’s co-sponsors
include such Lefty stalwarts as Nydia Velasquez, John Conyers, and
Sheila Jackson-Lee?
You can count on crude messages conveyed in t-shirts and signs.
Most of them on Sunday were from the Whoopi Goldberg school of Bush
wordplay. As witless as they were, they were more irritating than
offensive. The same could not be said of the most repulsive sign of
the day: “Send the Swift Boat Vets to Najaf.” For the sake of the
sign’s owner, I was glad that my brother, a Marine reserve, was not
with me.
You can count on the purveyors of cognitive dissonance, those
venerable Lefties who live in a parallel universe. Having been
examined and found lacking by history, they have discarded history,
and who can blame them? These are the revolutionary socialists, the
Worker’s World Party, and the assorted anarchists passing around
Kropotkin tracts. On Sunday, their ilk was best summed up in the
sign with Mao Tse-tung’s likeness and the motto: “Mao More Than
Ever.” I thought that one was pretty funny.
ALL IN ALL, THE LEFT’S day in the hot sun was a pretty subdued
affair. For this I am grateful, and can only hope things remain
calm. The way the weekend started on Friday night, I wasn’t so
sure.
Friday night was a biking protest. Up First Avenue in great
waves came a few thousand bicyclists, making the streets impassable
for cars. “Whose streets? Our streets!” many of them chanted. After
hearing a few women wearing “Champion Love” T-shirts chant, “We
don’t want their phony election, we believe it’s time for
insurrection,” I began shouting, “Re-elect Bush!” A slight man in a
“Peace Now” T-shirt shouted back, “F-you.”
Things looked like they might get ugly when an SUV came roaring
up First Avenue and very nearly mowed down one of the protesting
cyclists. The rider got off the bike just in time, but his bike did
not survive. It was an ugly moment, and it seemed to augur an
increase in tension. Eventually the police made over 200 arrests
when the bikers began blocking intersections near Madison Square
Garden. I went home with a feeling of foreboding about what lay
ahead.
There’s still plenty of time for trouble, and no doubt there are
those out there eager to make it. But after Sunday, I feel a bit
more optimistic, and more inclined to second the views of one of
the police officers I spoke with at Union Square.
“These are people whose parents didn’t show them enough
attention when they were kids. Look at the monster they
created!”
He said this as a ragtag group of revolutionaries of some
persuasion or other marched into the park and began hectoring the
crowd from behind an enormous banner. It was true, they did not
look like people on whom tenderness had been lavished.
My curiosity got the better of me and I walked over to read the
banner. Sure enough, it was illegible.
