Underlying yesterday's events was wide concern over a possible terrorist attack -- premonitions of a catastrophe aimed at disrupting the Republican convention, the national elections and the American psyche three years after Sept. 11. Such fears were expected to be the subtext of events throughout the convention, which runs through Thursday.
In response, the city and federal governments have mounted a $65 million security operation, with warplanes enforcing a no-fly zone over Manhattan, an armada of Coast Guard cutters and police launches patrolling waterways and tens of thousands of police officers and military personnel guarding landmarks, the convention site and other potential targets, as well as overseeing the week's almost nonstop protests.
At the end of this week, two friends and I will be heading to St. Paul, Minnesota, to perform a lefty comedy show and hopefully get into some Republican National Convention parties where we don't belong. If all goes well, it'll be a fun few days and I'll return home to New York with some new stories and no serious regrets.
For now, though, I'd like to share a few memories from four years ago. The 2004 RNC protest in New York is probably the craziest event I've ever been a part of. It was simultaneously inspiring and depressing, confusing and clarifying, and a ton of fun and soul-crushingly sad.
On the morning of the United for Peace and Justice march (the big one), I met up with some college friends at 7th Ave. and 14th St. in Manhattan. We were surrounded by liberals, leftists, and radicals of all kinds. Outside one deli stood the obligatory "Free Mumia" contingent. Next to them were the Pro-Legalization kids, who are always a fun bunch. Down the street the Pro-Palestine organizers mingled with the Nuclear Disarmament crew. The scene felt like a living, breathing encyclopedia entry on the current state of Leftist thinking in America if it were written by a rambling drunk. I was on my way to the Black Bloc and the anarchists, because I figured if anything crazy and exciting was going to happen it would be near them.
I saw my friends and made my way over, pushing past several "Impeach Him!" signs, when my favorite moment of the week happened. Two tattooed up anarchists walked by me and had the following conversation:
"I'm bored."
"Me too."
A pause.
"Wanna go fuck with some Socialists?"
"Yeah."
Even thinking about that now makes me smile. I love me some Socialists, but the only way to stay sane after the insanity of the previous three years was to have a sense of humor.
As we all began walking up the avenue, we passed a group of so-called Counter Protesters, right-wingers, twenty-somethings mostly, whose objective was to disrupt the march. They screamed things like, "It's a life, not a choice," and "Palestine doesn't exists." The latter exclamation was, while literally true, very confusing. I was amazed how much anti-Palestinian hate those bastards could conjure up.
The march up 7th Ave. towards Madison Square Garden was mostly peaceful, with one major exception. When we got to the Garden, which is also right next to the Fox News Network building, some kids who were carrying a Chinese New Year-style papier mache dragon set it down on the pavement.
What happened after that is a blur. All that can be said for certain is that the dragon went up in flames like a George W. Bush effigy in Sadr City on Free Lighter Fluid Night. I still don't know firsthand if that was the plan from the beginning, or if, as some insiders put it later that night, an undercover cop was involved somehow. Either way, what followed was, for me at least, the most chaotic few minutes of the whole week.
I pulled my bandana up around my face and scurried to the sidewalk as the whole block erupted. A few feet away some kids got handcuffed and then pepper-sprayed, which is a brutal and unnecessary combination. Other marchers were thrown to the ground and manhandled indiscriminately. If you were near the fire, you were a suspect. I'm not sure what the total arrest number was for that flare up, but it was one of many events where a bunch of people got picked up more for bad luck and proximity than anything else. The Critical Mass nightmare, the arrests outside the library, and several others instances were perfect examples of cops taking advantage of the carte blanche they were given officially by Bloomberg and unofficially by the establishment press.
Scenes with as much action as the dragon fire were rare, though. On the second night of the convention, I sat with a female friend on the Brooklyn side of the banks of the East River. We were watching three helicopters patrol Manhattan, which is a terrifying sight. She had just arrived in town that afternoon from working at a puppet theater for July and August.
"On the bus ride in today I half expected to see the entire city in flames," she said.
"They're locking people up left and right," I said. "But no riots, yet."
"I suppose that's good."
I suppose it was good. But I'm not ashamed to say that at the time I wanted chaos in the streets. I wanted to signal to the rest of the country and the rest of the world that there were people here who were angrier than they ever thought possible.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't have fun, though. Marching down the street 500,000 strong produces an amazing amount of excitement and adrenaline, and the camaraderie I felt with my fellow protesters was invaluable. The only way to live through those days was to find someone of a like mind, grab him or her by the shoulders, and yell, "HOW DID THIS HAPPEN!?"
For me, one specific event embodied spirit of joy and love and community that we all so desperately needed. St. Mark's church on 2nd Ave. and 10th St. allowed folks to meet up in its courtyard and gave out food after a long day in the sun. An anarchist marching band that I had seen earlier that day was playing music that I can best describe as New Orleans jazz if all the instruments were either broken, stolen, or homemade. It was wonderful. People danced. I overheard conversations about who had been arrested, who hadn't been heard from, and plans for the next day. I danced, and planned, and drank a 40 of Colt 45 and felt all right, because I was surrounded by people who were as horrified of the country at the time as I was.
And now I'm preparing to make a run of it again on the streets of the Twin Cities. The prevailing mood in our country has changed drastically in the past four years, and while it seems unlikely we'll have to suffer through another four years of a Republican administration, there will be great cause for concern no matter who wins this election. Many of this country's largest problems will persist regardless of which of the two major parties are in control, which is why organizing and marching are as important now as they were four years ago.
Now the last thing that I want to see is St. Paul, or New York, or anywhere else, in flames. Hopefully the next eight years will be spent trying to turn the Democratic Party into the progressive Party it often falsely claims to be, not attempting to hold off a war with Iran. And though I'm not exactly optimistic for the future of this country, I doubt that in the next 10 years I will feel more hopeless than I did in 2004.
So, if you see me in Minnesota, let's share some stories and some Colt 45, and four years from now we can argue about Whether It Was All Worth It. Until then, I'm gonna go fuck with some Socialists.