greenpass

Observations

Today I had lunch with friends who live on the Upper West Side, and after walking back to Madison Square Garden I realized how incredibly frightening and police-stateish the whole MSG area is. Walking down 9th Ave, at the corner of 43rd was some sort of Guardsman carrying one of the largest gun I had ever seen and wearing shades, a green beret, and a bulletproof vest.

Luckily for me, all the New Yorkers around me were very volubly talking and laughing about the man with the gun: "Think he's making up for something?" giggled a blonde woman in front of me. "Hey look at that freak!" yelled a guy on a bike. I was surprised how little respect the locals gave to the man with the three foot gun, but as I got closer and closer to the Garden the sheer weight of firearms, men in mirrored sunglasses, handcuffs, and crowds and crowds of cops everywhere was both depressing and intimidating - the catcalls and jokes stopped, and I started to see people stopped by cops. A homeless man was on the steps of Port Authority surrounded by four NYPD and another gun-toting camouflage-clad man; a bike messenger arguing (with four cops) that if cars could go up 9th Ave at 50mph, that he shouldn't have to slow down; a lost confused woman walking into the street in front of oncoming cars being grabbed by two cops.

On my way in through security, the cop who checked my driver's license pulled me aside, but all he wanted was to ask me about New Hampshire and whether or not there were any police vacancies in the towns around Lake Winnepesaukee. After a couple of seconds of complete bewilderment as he waxed poetic about the beauties of the Lakes region, I got over my awe of the incredible random disconnect between the silence and grandeur of the pine forests he was talking about and the police state lockdown on the corner of 34th and 9th, with an estimated 45 policemen around us, wished him luck and tactfully extricated myself from his clutches. I have to wonder why he bothered to stop me - was he trying to be friendly? To put a human face on the security madness? Was he hoping that he had found a kindred spirit in the masses of faceless mirrored sunglasses around him? He said he was just bored, which scared me - surely it can't be a good thing for thousands of bored policemen to be stationed all over the city.

Given what I've seen so far, if there is disorder here, it will be caused by a critical mass of bored and possibly nervous policemen who were probably prepped for massive protest and are now looking for a reason to exist. The people stopped by police today didn't look like wild-eyed neohippies, but New York homeless or mentally ill residents that probably don't handle the presence of so many armed soldiers on their streets terribly well. My solution to keep the police on their toes would be to have fewer police, not more, but I don't really know much about large-scale law enforcement. My feeling of security is always inversely proportional to the number of officers on the streets.

Music at the RNC

It's officially the party of gospel and country. I don't know why I'm surprised, although you'd think that they'd at least try to play a little less to type. Dick and Lynne Cheney are looking incredibly bored as the chorus is repeated again and again and again - delegates are doing the white man's overbite and vaguely waving their signs back and forth with varying degrees of success at following the rhythm. I thought the DNC delegates were bad dancers and had no soul - these poor delegates make the Democrats look like Earth, Wind and Fire.

And can I just mention how gigantic my sense of feeling pandered to is at the moment? If I was a Republican young voter, I would be thinking, "Didn't Dexter Freebish release the single "Leaving Town" in September 2000? And wasn't that their only hit single ever? What kind of message are we trying to send here???"

And now Van Halen??? You've got to be kidding. I know I moaned about "Go Johnny Go" at the DNC, but at least that would be right up this age bracket's alley.

And for my final musical nitpick - every single song has been at least 3-4 minutes of repetition, in addition to the actual song itself. Maybe they had trouble finding appropriate songs given the strong anti-Bush leanings of artists such as Bruce Springsteen, and had to resort to repetition ad nauseam of the few that didn't mind their music being used.

Inside the Garden

I'm sitting on the floor of the media centre of the RNC at the moment, using UPI's wireless and feeling terribly hungry as everyone else has their nice catered dinner in the little press tents. I went down to Air America's space, which was absolutely tragic - a single table, alone in the bottom floor of the press center, amongst the pallets and forklifts that normally live down there. It was completely empty and alone, and a solitary laptop sat there indicating that at some point someone had been there...Needless to say, Air America was obviously treated pretty poorly.

I'm watching the Republicans having their picture taken now. It rather reminds me of the final scene of Steve Buscemi's wonderful film "Living in Oblivion", where a 60-second room tone is taken and every character has a minute of silent, personal reflection on the events over the course of the film. I watch these people, and remember the feeling at the DNC at the same moment (after everyone had finished booing the Fox News sign, which was right in the middle of the balcony at the Fleet Centre). There was a sense of beginning, of silent acknowledgement of "something starting tonight".

In both cases, the photo preceeded the first evening of speakers, and it gave me a moment to stop and look at the faces of the Republican Party - overwhelmingly white, and mostly older than the DNC delegates. Dennis Hastert is speaking and he looks exactly like all the delegates do. I counted two African-Americans (not counting the band), about 15 or 20 young people, and not a single Asian or South Asian face as the camera panned across the silent crowd, and it reminded me of the young energy of the DNC. The preponderance of volunteers there were young and energetic - this convention appears at first sight to be composed of many clones of my grandparents.

Anyway, I'm off to the Planned Parenthood concert with Moby. I've missed the opening act because I had to come to Madison Square Garden to get my convention pass for the next four days - just my luck. But I think I can forgo an hour of opening music for four days of media centre access, and as many free publications I can carry back to the East Village.

Ed Schrock resigns

Republican Congressman Ed Schrock of Virginia, co-sponsor of the FMA anti-gay marriage amendment (he also wants to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell for being 'too liberal'), has resigned. He was outed on a blog called BlogActive, and now feels the need to step down. Athough I revel in the irony of the situation, I think it's tragic that in this day and age, a gay American can let being outed ruin his career and his life's achievements. There are seven recordings of this guy on a gay sex hotline, and these recordings - and their posting on BlogActive - were enough to force him to resign.

Good article

The most representative article on the protests so far.

For every young man with an unorthodox piercing in a seemingly painful place, there was an elderly woman who walked in the midday sun for hours.

For each wildly costumed, madly gyrating, drum-beating protester, there was a family that had made the trip into Manhattan together to march as one.

And for all the chants denouncing President Bush as a terrorist, for all the obscenities screamed full throated, there were just as many people, young and old, who expressed in more subdued tones their anger with the Bush administration.

Excellent.

UPDATE: In addition, one thing that I was struck by was the fact that almost everyone I met at the Convention was a native New Yorker. It really drove home the fact that the GOP has picked arguably the most unrepresentative city in the entire nation to have its quadrennial bunfight. I can only imagine what the FMA supporting GOP delegates thought about the overwhelming loud and proud New York BLGT presence yesterday.

Happy thoughts

I'm watching CNN right now, and the storyline for today is that the face of the RNC is far more moderate than the policies of the current Administration. I'm so glad that the media has siezed on this with its usual bloodyminded doggedness, and seems to be bludgeoning this idea into the heads of their viewers. Alan Keyes was just asked whether he thinks the current lineup represents the face of the "party he knows and loves"; Karl Rove was asked why none of the architects of neoconservatism were speaking (and gave a lame answer); and then Ahnold, Giuliani and McCain were shown and the anchor pointed out that they were odd representatives for the face of the Party. And that's just within a half hour of afternoon CNN.

Hurrah

Whoa - Ezra bought us $28 tickets for the Planned Parenthood concert tonight, part of the Imagine Festival. But Matt Clam just came over and gave us each $150 seats. We just made over $100 profit, each.

Hey look at me!

In the Wall Street Journal, the Republican convention bloggers threw metaphorical trash at the DNC bloggers for engaging in "hey-look-at-me" blogging. And now we have all these posts from the RNC bloggers - "Hey look at us, we met Ed Koch! [ad nauseam - Ed.] We saw Sean Hannity! I got real close to Alan Keyes! [really - Ed.]"

You know, I wouldn't say anything about this if they hadn't been so goddamn mean about our coverage. But they asked for it. Their coverage is no better and no worse than ours - of course it isn't, because they're also bloggers without much knowledge or access at a huge media show. I don't know what they expected, but our coverage was a product of our situation, not of laziness or stupidity. And now so is theirs.

Sunday (not) in the park

Finally arrived at the Tank, and can take some time to describe my time here so far.

Woke up yesterday at 5.30am and took the 7am Fung Wah down from Boston. The bus was full of people going down to protest - signs, costumes and progressive energy were in evidence. On the D train up to Chinatown, I talked to one protestor who had been on the bus with us, and was carrying a sign saying "Bush and Dick make love not war" - unoriginal, but effective in its own way I suppose. He said he had been organizing protests since 1969, and led protests in 2000 in Boston during the recounts. His analysis: that corporations called Gore up after the recount. I can just imagine the conversation:

"Mr. Gore, I've got the Man on line 2?"
"What's that, Tricia?"
"On line 2, Mr. Vice President. It's an affluent powerful white man from The Corporations. Should I put him through?"
"Sure. Hi there, Mr. Fat Cat Donor - what can I do for you?"
"Al, we need you to stand down. We need to make money on this Bush guy."
"Roger that - anything else I can do for you?"
"Yee-ah...we're gonna have to have you gain 50lbs. And grow a beard and go bald."

Anyway, this guy was really serious about his conspiracy theories. He asked me if I was an FBI agent, claiming a file 3 inches thick, and really thought that 9-11 was an inside job. He also told me entirely seriously that the DNC was practice by Mitt Romney and the Feds for locking down Boston and declaring martial law after Bush steals the election. Although he claimed to be able to distinguish agents provocateur, and guaranteed that the protests wouldn't turn violent, he told me proudly that at the last NYC protests in March 2003, he had overturned the crowd control barricades because he "refused to be penned in" and it was his right to march down the next avenue and stop traffic (although there was a perfectly good march route already), and that when the police regrouped and came at them with horses they linked arms and it was "great fun". Needless to say, he didn't calm any of my fears of disorderly conduct over the next few days.

Around the East Village, where I'm staying, there's chalk graffiti and posters everywhere against the RNC. The people on the streets seem like they're just going about their business until you realize that most of them are wearing anti-Bush shirts. On the way out of the subway at Union square we were yelled at by cops: "You missed it! They're all gone! You got dressed up for nothing! Better go home!" Cops everywhere - 8 of them outside the Virgin Megastore, twirling their batons. Four more on the corner of the park, stacking their plastic handcuffs for easy access. Rows and rows of them along the protest march. Lines for the bathroom in Starbucks (some people with anti-globalization protest signs). Police on Vespas, buzzing around, completely and amusingly emasculated.

We joined the protest around 25th street, and began the slow crawl towards MSG - the sun was horrifically hot, and we were all dripping with sweat. There were all ages, colours, backgrounds at the march - a group of families from Brooklyn with about 10 toddlers and assorted other children with them. A group of Hispanic seniors from a Catholic church in Queens. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The Glamericans ("Fashion memo: flipflops are in!"; "5 deferments? Very tacky, darling"). And a whole bunch of other liberal hangers-on that I thought really kind of ruined the message - free Mumia, anti-globalization, anti-McDonalds and Starbucks images, anti-capitalism (I was approached multiple times by people trying to sell me anti-capitalist buttons and stickers, without a hint of irony). I couldn't help thinking that anti-Kerry protests at the RNC aren't really sending the right message. However, the protest was surprisingly positive - I didn't see a single confrontation or even any serious counterprotest. There was one guy holding a sign that said "Trust Bush - Trust Jesus" with some bomb and fighter jet pictures (which didn't seem to be terribly logical), but people just chanted "Shame, shame" and "No more Bush" as they walked past him. The most fun image - a line of 30 cops walking across the march, holding on to each other's waists like conga dancers. The extremely clever Glamericans immediately began drumming a conga beat, and at least a few of the cops seemed to be joining in to the spirit of the dancing protesters around them. When we got to MSG though, the hundreds (no exaggeration) of cops and one or two RNC delegates stared at us in stony humourless silence. The contrast between the colourful, musical, exciting protest and the double and triple lines of riot police in mirrored visors couldn't have been more stark.

Putting John on the Fung Wah bus, I talked to an evangelist who was called by the Lord to come down from Hampton Beach to hand out tracts to the protestors. I tried to figure out if he actually supported Bush and the war, but he wasn't really interested in talking about anything except how the Lord provided for his car insurance every year, and occasionally praying in a desultory way for the bus to be on time and for a cheeseburger. Apparently earlier that day he had prayed to the Lord and a cheeseburger was provided (in the form of a guy from Chicago that bought him a Happy meal), but it didn't work so well down in Chinatown.

Last night we went to see "Garden State" (of which more later), and then back to Matt Yglesias' parents' lovely flat for drinks and conversation until about 2.30am. Today I'm meeting up with my journalist friend from Il Manifesto, and getting a pass for Madison Square Garden - we'll see how it all works out. I can't wait to see the security inside that building.

Off to New York

I've been at one of my oldest dearest friends' wedding all day so now I get to start packing for the RNC. I leave tomorrow morning at 6am to be on the 7am bus from Chinatown - should get in at about lunchtime, inshallah. Then hopefully meeting up with a family friend, and blogging the United for Peace & Justice rally. This is the one that was supposed to be on the great lawn in Central Park - it's since moved to the streets of New York and will be marching past MSG (which will give me worse headaches than its acronymous namesake, I'm sure). I'll keep you all posted.