Short Stories, Long Odds

These poor bastards. I’ll tell you why it sucks to be a Texas delegate at the DNC - when I was covering happenings outside the Fleet Center and around Boston yesterday, I saw a Texas Delegate buy his own lunch. If he’d been from North Carolina or Ohio, someone would have been throwing filet mignon at him. Instead, he walked from the Fleet center to a sub shop and bought his lunch and then ate by himself. I asked him for a comment.

His face lit up, briefly shining with the idea that someone… cared about him. He didn’t have much to say. No goodies, no love, barely even any attention from anyone at the event. Mostly they are treated with a sad smile and a shake of the head. They come from the land of Bush, he says, and it might as well be Mars.

His face lit up, briefly shining with the idea that someone… cared about him. He didn’t have much to say. No goodies, no love, barely even any attention from anyone at the event. Mostly they are treated with a sad smile and a shake of the head. They come from the land of Bush, he says, and it might as well be Mars.

After speaking with him, I walked into the famed Protest Pen, the Cage, and find it almost totally empty. There are tattered, sodden remains of signs clinging to the fences and tourists walking around taking pictures of them. They say things like “IS THIS DEMOCRACY?” and “IS THIS THE FREEDOM WE’RE FIGHTING FOR?” A guy snapping pictures looks up at the razor wire and says “Oh look, its true.”

Besides tourists, there are several police officers patrolling the area. I snag one and ask for a few words, which she says she’ll give so long as I don’t use her name.

The female police officer tells me that things have been really quiet and that, for the most part, the protesters haven’t caused one bit of trouble, and what’s more, have been really respectful and nice. However, there haven’t hardly been many protesters at all, and they apparently were hearing that Thursday was “Civil Disobedience Day” and that the kids were planning on getting rowdy. One sign had been removed from a police fence so that the cops could see through it, but that was mostly it for confrontations so far. The only actual incident had occured on Tuesday when the geniuses from GodHatesFags.com showed up. They yelled at every delegate, calling them sodomites, and told all the protesters and cops they were going to hell.

My favorite part of this story is how the anti-abortion protestors ended up getting in a major scuffle with the GodHatesFags crew, which resulted in the latter group getting tossed. “They had little kids with them,” the cop tells me, shaking her head. “I live in Southie and I never seen people as mean as what I saw yesterday. Are they all in one big family or what?”

I answer her. “It wouldn’t surprise me if they’re all related, if you catch my meaning. They all belong to one big church, in Alabama. Apparently it is the church of God’s elect, his special children. According to them, anyways.”

“Easy for them to say.” she says. “Little kids, man.”

“They have monuments on their website dedicated to displaying how long victims of hate crimes have been burning in hell. They have one for Matthew Sheppard, they picket other churches for being Godless whores, and so on and so forth,” I tell her.

She just sort of stares at me in disbelief. “That’s actually a church?”

We talk about the general consequences of filling little kids up with hate for a while, and then I move on.

As I leave the Protest Pen, a sax player starts ripping into “America The Beautiful.” The cops all smile and clap. The version is really soulful, and I can’t help but grin.

I see a slat-shouldered blonde man waiting by the gate to get in, and I accost him. He looks like a journalist, and I want to find out what the media accomodations have been like for the little guy. He turns out to not just be a journalist, but from the foreign press, from Finland.

I ask him how covering American politics differs from Scandinavian political journalism, and he laughs, telling me that he’s only heard people call it Finlandish or even Dutch journalism. I apologize on behalf of my geographically challenged countrymen.

He tells me there is much more pageantry and orchestration in this convention than he ever sees at home. “Of course,” he says, “I haven’t seen a coronation in a while, either.”

Mr. Finland goes on to tell me that they have been provided with excellent work space but that they have the same access problem that always exists for journalists. He also laments the lack of real news, and seems amazed by the idea that “Shove it” serves as a leading story in this vacuum.

“You know,” I say, “‘Shove it’ would have been news in American politics no matter what, sad as that is.”

“Yeah,” he says.

I tell him that that if he’d been here in the seventies he could have experienced the McGovern convention, which had quite a bit more action, or God forbid, Chicago in 1968. I also say that Americans fall asleep when you start talking about substance or policy or what you’re actually going to spend their money on, and he laughs.

“Kerry’s biggest danger is changing to please anyone at the last minute.” Finland opines. “It seems like in American politics, no matter what you do will get you in trouble, so he should just be who he is. There’s less chance of screwing things up that way.”

“You are a politically keen observer,” I say. “Stay away from my job.”

I head into the D’angelos where I saw the poor Texas delegate feeding himself and I get a sandwich. Two interviews makes it time to eat.

I get about halfway through my sandwich when the first one lands - the pidgeon, I mean. The dirty flying rats smell my bread from the rooftops, and suddenly I’m surrounded on all sides by the nasty animals, all cooing and waiting for me to show a moment of weakness, during which they will overtake me.

I put my sandwich away and stand up, and as I do, a raucous cheer sounds behind me, up the street. I turn around and see a man phalanxed by what appear to be adoring hordes. I gird up my journalistic loins and make a run for it, because I’ve just realized I’m watching Howard Dean walk up the street.

“Howard Dean!” I holler. “How will things be on Friday morning?”

Dean looks me right in the eye and says “We’re a whole new party, and we’re gonna show them what that means.” Then he is borne away by the Deaniacs, looking as if at any moment he will be lifted onto their shoulders, or set into a litter and carried to the City of Gold, or perhaps flown into a hole in Heaven that opens just for him.

After this I interviewed a few volunteers. They told me their job is to help people have as much fun as possible, to help them have an easy time in the city. Colleen is a lifelong Boston resident who votes every chance she gets and leads her team of volunteers. I see Colleen and her team tell people where to go, take pictures for them, give directions on the phone, and generally have a good time hanging out together, being of service. Colleen smiles easily and wears sandals.

Dana is another volunteer, a 27 year old grad student. She is all flush with excitement from seeing Dean and seems a bit reluctant to be interviewed, but soon she opens up. She tells me she would like to one day go into city government, and she loves the idea of government and democracy.

“Hang on,” she says after about five minutes of talking. “I have to help these delegates.” Then she is gone into the crowds.

What she said - the “idea” of government and democracy - really hit me as I climbed onto the T and headed for home, to get my ill-fated scoop up on this page. I can only assume that this idea she talks about is the same one that made me get all teary-eyed when John Edwards spoke. The idea that things can get better is one of the few thoughts I’ve had lately that is stronger than the knowledge that things are totally cockeyed now.

The idea we’ve been living with for the last three years is that things are fine, and they are not. My friends’ parents are routinely laid off from jobs they’ve given 28 and 29 years to, mere months before their retirement benefits would come full. Now they have nothing. My parents are some of the hardest working people I have ever known, period, and they usually have to count on luck to get through the month, let alone through to retirement. The generation that fought the Vietnam war is getting screwed along with the rest of us in cycles so vast it must make them difficult to see.

My mother has a year book from her Senior year in high school, and like most people’s yearbooks there are signatures in the front, back, and on photos. I was thumbing through it when I was about twelve and I saw that at least seven or eight pictures per page had a black X in the corner.

I said “Mom, these X’s, are these your friends?”

She said “No, Josh, those are the ones that died in Vietnam, or came back ruined.”

So there’s that to consider, when I look at my generation, and how many of us are in danger or are dying, or have died. I see my generation slowly waking up and getting more involved, but for the most part they remain untouched, and some are even satisfied, thinking the number of people lost is okay so long as the Evil-Doers get bounced.

So people can’t pay their bills or the rent or have health insurance or are dodging RPGs in some Third World Hell Hole, and you want to tell me everything is fine?

The idea of government and democracy has a central theme, I believe, of actually being able to affect change when things go wrong. I would like to think this idea isn’t a lie. Maybe I’ve gone from being a liberal centrist to a populist optimist, I don’t know. What I do know is that these next few months are going to be a knockdown dragout bar brawl.

Anyways, enough of that depressing noise. Here’s a picture my friend Lexi made.