Lovely, gentle readers,

I began this blog a year ago, during the Democratic National Convention. In my “What This Blog Is About” post in July, I noted that the city expected to make $160 million from the DNC. On August 24, 5280 magazine claimed the convention netted $266 million in direct and indirect spending. It’s nice to know the predictions were somewhere in the ballpark.

Here is a timely image of late senator Ted Kennedy from the convention (actually, it’s from The Place for Politics that MSNBC set up near the Millennium Bridge at Riverfront Park):

But my favorite image from the convention may just be this one:

Have a good weekend, y’all!

A little girl foots her scooter across the Platte River bridge. “Don’t get too far ahead,” her mother calls, as the scooter swings toward the edge of the sidewalk. The girl’s driving leg beats a steady rhythm as trucks rumble by, the river flows below, bottle-brown over white shreds of trash. There are no fish.

***

If you’re looking for things to do this week, check out this calendar or this one.

Exhibit Darfur sounds particularly cool.

Here’s a list of free events.

American moments:

Navajo code talkers carrying the flag into the convention at 3 pm, Monday, August 25. See this article.

Abortion protesters whizzing into the middle of Michelle Obama’s speech at the Convention Center and being escorted out just as quickly. My camera is so slow I couldn’t get a good picture.

And here at the Convention Center.

Best unexpected encounter:

Running into a friend I hadn’t seen in a long while at the women’s caucus.

Catch in the throat:

Hillary’s speech. And the exhibit of photographs of Iranians in Civic Center Park.

Déjà vu:

Barack Obama has said he will review every one of George Bush’s executive orders. That’s what Bush did to Clinton in 2001. I want many of Bush’s policies to be overturned, but then again, what about precedent? Is every president going to seek to erase the record of the last one? Will the pendulum always be swinging back and forth in a crazy manner? I don’t think that’s good for our country.

Determination:

Demonstrators shouting, “When the people of the world are under attack, what do we do? Stand up! Fight back!”

and

“Whose streets? Our streets!”

Energy:

Girl Scouts playing clapping games on the bus to Denver Monday morning.

Generosity:

The female announcer at ReCreate68’s concert on Tuesday night at Civic Center Park, saying, “I want to give you a poem.”

Good ideas:

If you know a woman who’s running for office, make her casseroles. Offer to baby-sit her children or drive them to wherever they need to go. That is the kind of support women need to run for office.

Most energetic speakers at the Women’s Caucus, 8/28/08

Governor and DNC Chair Howard Dean. He was a good speaker. I really have to wonder about “the scream.”

Senator Barbara Boxer. I think she’d make a good president.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz from Florida

Most poignant moment:

I was impressed by Michelle Obama. Toward the end of her speech about the struggles women face, she said she felt very emotional. I don’t know how anyone does politics without bursting into tears all the time.

Most shocking statistics:

Rwanda has a legislature that is 48.8 percent female. That is the highest percentage in the world. The United States, by contrast, has a national legislature that is about 17 percent female.

McCain has a zero rating from Planned Parenthood and NARAL. He even voted against requiring insurance companies to provide contraceptives. Barack Obama has a 100 percent rating from those two groups.

Stamina:

Lilly Ledbetter, the woman who sued Goodyear for equal pay after discovering she’d been paid less than her male counterparts: “I was there for 19 years and 10 months, making less money than my counterparts for the same work. . . . I will never get what is rightfully mine in this country as long as I live.” But, she said, if she could get this bill (Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act) passed for us, it would be worthwhile.

It’s after midnight, but it’s not the DNC that’s keeping me awake; I’m pretty sure it’s the two Aleve I took right before bed at 10 pm.

I watched Hillary’s August 26 speech at the Democratic National Convention for the second time tonight, and I felt that sense of resignation that women sometimes feel when they’re told that, once again, they have to wait. I really wanted her to win the nomination. I think she could have beat McCain.

I admired her, standing up there and supporting Barack Obama as she did, but it gives me a bad feeling in my throat.

I guess there was no way for the nomination fight to be a win-win situation. Either women or African Americans would feel they had been sent to the back of the bus. It’s time for me to forgive Barack Obama for having the audacity to run for president after only a couple of years in the Senate, but I won’t forget. I’ll continue to suspect that the Washington establishment encouraged him to avoid having another Clinton in office, and I’ll try not to listen to that nagging voice that says they didn’t want a woman to be president. I’ll vote for him, but I’ll give money to local candidates. I’ll wait to wear a T-shirt that says “Change We Can Believe In” until after he’s proved that he can win an election AND actually reform Washington. Then I’ll be willing to concede he’s the change candidate–not before.

***

On a happier note, the Democratic National Convention has gone a long way toward recognizing women. The four convention chairs are all women: Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives; Kathleen Sebelius, governor of Kansas; Shirley Franklin, mayor of Atlanta, and Letitia van de Putte, Texas state senator.

***

I don’t think I’m the only one with regrets. I walked by a black Hillary supporter down by Union Station, and she was mentioning to someone else that a lot of men she knew had said they didn’t want to be led by a woman. And she asked them, “Why not? Clinton is qualified!”

On one of my stops by the Place for Politics, MSNBC’s setup near Union Station, I noticed a lot of Hillary supporters intently watching the screens as Carolyn Kennedy gave her speech. One man was shouting “Bitter,” and a woman responded, “Sexist!”

Well, I thought, that’s really going to move things along.

I encountered two kinds of youth culture in Denver the past two days: the anarchists and those who are participating in the process in one form or another. The first group is not nearly as clean and polished as the second, but their rough edges appeal to me. Maybe because no matter how clean and polished I tried to be growing up, I never felt that I succeeded. Plus, I’ve been double-stinky the last two days, so I fit right in here.

I’m at the Civic Center Park amphitheater, where the red, white, and blue beach ball is still floating around, propelled by the slammers dancing to a punk band brought here by ReCreate68. The crowd is mostly young; they look scruffier than the people on the mall wearing press or DNC credentials. (None of them seem to be here.) An old man goes by wearing a “Gulag” shirt. The woman sitting in front of me holds a sign that reads, “Was your American flag made in China?” In the audience, there’s a woman wrapped in a flag marked “Vote.”

So far I’ve listed to Rebel Diaz (hiphop with a two guys and female rapper with a really good voice) and Whiskey Blanket (three guys doing hiphop with classical influences–note the violin), pictured here with friends.

I don’t know the name of the band playing now. One of the band members starts leading a chant, “Fuck the police,” and then mentions knocking down someone “half your weight.” I think they were talking about this Code Pink protester.

There are about ten police officers standing to the band’s left, my right. They’ve been there every time I’ve gone through the park the last two days.

The crowd just in front of the stage chanted along, and a few people from the audience echoed them. It made me feel bad. I don’t like all the police clogging up the streets in Denver (I just saw a big SUV go by with 11 police riding shotgun), but I don’t like hearing that either. I know how I’d feel if someone said, “Fuck the women!” But when I see a line of police blocking off a street, I don’t feel sorry at all. I wish they would leave.

I asked a man sitting in front of me if he knew the name of the band, and he said, “Not a clue. There might be a generational gap between…” and he gestured from us to them. “Hey,” I wanted to say, “punk started in the 70s. You and I are the right generation.” But then, I didn’t know what punk was in high school. I didn’t figure it out until I went to England my junior year of college and first saw people with Mohawks.

He continued, “My generation may have opened Pandora’s box, but here’s where it went.” He got up and left.

Lady Speech, a local performance poet, once again filled up the space between bands. She mentioned that because she’s black, she knows what it’s like to be oppressed by cops, but that they’re also human. “If we fight against each other, there won’t be anybody left!” There were a few shouts of agreement from the audience.

Most of the audience left after From the Depths wrapped up their set (I finally found someone who knew their name). Only a few people stood in front of the stage where Black Speech Brigade, another punk band, performed. It’s too bad, because the Brigade is a better band, by my standards: their songs have more of a beat, and I can understand probably half the lyrics. I looked around at the small crowd, at the photographers kneeling on the steps in front of the band, at the colonnade. The police had left. I needed to catch a bus. I left too, allowing myself the pleasure of re-visiting this antiwar exhibit of photographs of Iranians in Civic Center Park. I highly recommend checking it out.

Monday night, about 100 protesters were arrested in Civic Center Park as they attempted to reach the 16th Street Mall. Police suspected they wanted to reach some downtown Denver hotels and disrupt convention activity there. Sue Cobb, a spokesperson for the Denver mayor’s office, said, “It is hard to avoid arresting people who are bound and determined to get arrested.”

Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard if the police presence wasn’t so provocative.

I have no plans to do anything that might get me arrested during the week of the Democratic National Convention, but I sure did finding myself resenting the police on Monday as I made my way around Denver. There were dozens of police at ReCreate68′s demonstration at 19th and Stout (the Federal Building).

Every time I turned around, another group of bicycle cops went by two-by-two. When I was waiting for Code Pink to finish preparations for their aerial photograph of protestors forming the words, “Make Out, Not War,” I noticed one cop filming the demonstrators. Come on! What evil do they think a bunch of women in pink are going to do?

I don’t know about you, but seeing cops everywhere makes me want to push the limits. When I was walking up the 16th Street Mall about 7 pm, just about when the arrests in Civic Center Park were happening, I was following a double line of cops in full riot gear. Another double line proceeded up the other side of the street. Some people were heckling them. One man came by and asked to take their picture, saying, “I think you guys look awesome.” He sounded as if he meant it. And the woman strolling nearby with her boyfriend cozied up to some young officers for a picture.

One cop in the group admitted he didn’t know which group was protesting. He said there are ten protests going on at any given time, which I found interesting, but it made me wonder how they define “protest.” Does a bunch of women in pink spelling out letters on a park lawn qualify as a “protest”? Apparently, according to Denver police, it does. Seems pretty harmless to me.

I say, we should let the protesters go as far as they can without hurting anyone. Let them disrupt a party like this one. Is it really going to end the world if some telecom fat cat or the legislators she’s trying to buy can’t get into the party for a few minutes?

As I sit in Common Grounds coffeehouse at 17^th and Wazee, the Democratic National Convention hardly intrudes. One patron in a bright white shirt at the counter said the police were doing a good job of containing the demonstrators who wanted to make trouble, but the dyed-blond guy behind the counter was noncommittal.

It’s about 1 pm on what will be a twelve-hour day in Denver, and I’m glad to be sitting down in air conditioning. I’m also glad to be using Common Grounds’s free Wifi, which doesn’t require me to pledge my life. I tried to figure out Downtown Denver Wifi, but I couldn’t understand why I had to pay when the front page said it was free.

That was this day for you: I kept going to the wrong places and finding situations that surprised me or delighted me or scared me just a little. I got off the bus and began wandering around downtown until I ran into a most impressive fence and cops checking credentials. The closest I could get to the Pepsi Center was Speer and Auraria. An hour later, I found the beginning of the demonstration route by walking past it, asking someone where it was, and then actually reading the street sign. And when the demonstration started an hour late, the only “float” in the parade was this one. Kind of prophetic, isn’t it?

All I can say is, thank God for ReCreate 68. After they were done with the speeches by the American Indian Movement and the pleas for Leonard Peltier, they came yelling and chanting out of Civic Center Park, doing their level best to sound scary with their chants and look scary in their Guantanamo orange jumpsuits and black hoods, and went straight down the 16^th Street Mall. I did wonder if they had gotten permission for that: the police presence was oppressive. I got ordered onto the sidewalk by a mounted cop, who was nice enough to thank me afterward, but even the horses were dressed in riot gear, with clear plastic blinders and things around their ankles for I don’t know what.

When we got to the Federal Building, people were shouting, “This is what a police state looks like.” And I looked around, at the hundred or so police, with ten mounted, lining Stout and 19^th, compared to a few hundred demonstrators, and thought, Yeah, you’re right. The demonstrators had turned inward by then, with the “torture victims” kneeling, their hoods on, while people took pictures of them. Across the plaza another subgroup of demonstrators was talking about the Cuban Five, whom I had never heard of.

As I was leaving, I asked a young woman stripping off her orange jumpsuit where they were going next. She said, “I’m not sure. Just see what happens.”

I wanted to stick around and “see what happens,” but I was hungry. And so here I am. All morning I’ve been walking in circles in Denver during the Democratic National Convention, and it looks likely to continue for four days. But at least I got to see him.

And he-she!

]]> http://bethpartin.com/just-see-what-happens-outside-the-democratic-national-convention/feed/ 2 http://bethpartin.com/democratic-national-convention/ http://bethpartin.com/democratic-national-convention/#comments Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:49:53 +0000 Beth http://bethpartin.com/?p=1

I’ll start posting about Denver on August 25, the first day of the Democratic National Convention.

I’ll be investigating how easy it is to get around Denver with the DNC in town. Stay tuned.

Factoids from the city’s website:

The last time Denver hosted the Democratic National Convention was exactly 100 years ago.

“The Democratic National Convention 2008 is anticipated to attract 35,000 guests to the region, including delegates, elected officials, media, and political enthusiasts from around the world. Additionally, it is anticipated that Denver will bring in $160 million in economic benefits.

The Convention will be held on August 25–28, 2008 at the Pepsi Center.”

See this page for information about the parade route. Parades can take place every day of the convention from 11 am to 3 pm along the route from Colfax and Bannock to Speer. Demonstrators will march in the southbound lanes of Speer to Larimer and then to the Pepsi Center.

Caveat: Light rail will run through the parade route. Reminds me of a comedy routine I saw in Amsterdam: “Oh, no! The trains run both ways!”

Some sensible advice: Don’t drive in downtown Denver from 10 to 4 during the convention.

There was a lot of stress on the website about demonstrators being seen but not interfering with everyone else. It sounded a little controlling to me. Have we entered the age of nice demonstrations?