Blogging for Democrats, Page Two

by Jo Freeman

 

This time each caucus met only twice: women on Tuesday and Thursday morning (followed by meetings of seniors and youth) and the other caucuses on Monday and Wednesday. The number of women of color in the women's meeting jumped, as did the number of women in the GLBT caucus.

After the women, the African-American and GLBT caucuses were the largest meetings, drawing 200-250 people to each meeting; 40 to 50 percent were women. There were also meetings for Latinos, Asian-Pacifics, American Indians, People of Faith, Rurals, Veterans, the Disabled and a generalized Ethnic caucus.

I estimated the percent of women at all of the meetings I visited. Female presence ranged from 10 percent at the Vets caucus to 75 percent at the AFSCME meeting, but generally hovered between 33 and 40 percent.

Various Union groups also held their own meetings. I spent a lot of time at the AFSCME meetings, which was warm, friendly and small enough for unimpeded camera shots. Next to the platform stood life-sized paper cut-outs of the Four Republicans of the Apocalypse — Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield and Ashcroft which guests were invited to bop with beanie bags after they spoke.

At one time the group meetings were forums for debate; now they are just rallies for the faithful. The top pols, and the wannabees, make the rounds of as many as they can so it's a good chance to see them up close. I heard Teresa Heinz Kerry at the GLBT meeting, Howard Dean at the Latino meeting, Kamala Harris (DA of San Francisco) at the AA caucus, and Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin at the AFSCME meeting.

The Tuesday women's meeting featured Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Barbara Mikulski, the Sanchez sisters and Donna Brazile. Standing in the corner where the ramp met the platform, I got some great shots of great women that morning.

On Thursday, the powers-that-be decided to keep photographers at least 20 feet away from the podium. My lens isn't long enough or my flash powerful enough to shoot anything worth seeing from that distance. When I went around to get a quick shot of former Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman from right below the podium, a young man from the DNC press office stood in front of me and all but pushed me out of the way. "Security" he said.

When I tried to occupy a vacant seat in the front row, the women sitting next to it told me that seat was taken, even though only by her bags. I did get a spare seat in the third row, which was barely close enough to shoot from, but when I held up my camera, the DNC staffer was there again, keeping me from shooting anything decent. When I explained that I couldn't shoot from so far away, he threatened to throw me out if I persisted in trying to get closer.

Nor could I get near to the VIP pen, on one side of the ramp, to take photographs of the women waiting their turn to speak. I asked the name of my pursuer. Brian, he said, Brian Richardson. I later learned that there is no one by that name on the DNCC staff.

Pissed as hell, I retreated to the back of the room, where I ran into my friend Gale Brewer, long time New York City activist and currently a member of the NYC City Council. We kept each other company for the rest of the women's meeting. I grumbled about missing a great shot of our mutual friend, Peggy Kerry, standing up for her brother with their sister Diane.

My Two Seconds of Fame

Teresa Heinz Kerry was the featured speaker of the Thursday women's meeting, and the supposed reason for the extra "security." She was late.

Susan Turnbull, Deputy Chair of the DNC and former chair of its women's caucus, took on the job of keeping the crowd occupied while we waited. She asked several questions of the audience which required calling out or standing up in reply.

"Everyone here for their first convention" she said. About half the crowd stood up. Next she had everyone else stand and the first timers sit-down. "Everyone here for their second convention sit-down," third...., fourth...., fifth..., sixth.....

"This one is mine," I told Gale. "I'm going to be the last one standing." We'd been sharing a seat on the edge of the audience, and both of us were standing next to it. When Turnbull got up to ten conventions, there were only a couple of us left standing and I was afraid she wouldn't see me on the outskirts mixed in with those who didn't have seats.

I got up on the chair and called out "TWELVE". The audience broke out in applause. As I got down from the chair, someone yelled out "from where?" "New York" Gale yelled back on my behalf.

 After the meeting was over I was perusing the buttons and literature in the entry area when several people came up and asked me how I had gone to so many Democratic conventions. Two young women did the same as I was walking to the Fleet Center that evening.

In 1960 I lived in Los Angeles, I told them, and my mother took me to hear John F. Kennedy's acceptance speech at the USC Coloseum. In 1964 I hitchhiked to Atlantic City to participate in the MFDP vigil. I was living in Chicago in 1968, and had obtained press credentials in order to write about it, so that one was easy. In 1972 I was a Shirley Chisholm alternate with the Chicago Challenge delegation which unseated Mayor Daley. In 1976 I was a reporter again, and have been one ever since.

When I added that I almost didn't come to this one and why, two people offered me spare bedrooms for the night. But it was Thursday, and I intended to leave on the 11:30 p.m. bus. Too bad I didn't get my two econds of fame on Tuesday.

Security

Everyone knew that security would be tighter than ever before. All trash cans were removed from the city's sidewalks so no one could put a bomb inside. The locals deserted the business district. The streets were not crowded and the stores were not packed. Afterwards the Mayor apologized to the business community for all the lost business.

Prohibited from the Fleet Center were coolers, containers of any type (bottles, cans or spray), umbrellas, laser pointers, knitting needles, flashlights, noise-makers, unopened envelopes or packages, and more. Employees of several big news organizations had received terrorism defense training and been issued kits which they were told to keep close at hand. Many of the items in those kits (e.g. flashlights and whistles) were confiscated at the security perimeter. At least the wait in line to go through the metal detectors was shorter than the hour required in 1996, and no one asked me to open my camera to prove it wasn't a weapon in disguise, which happened in 2000.

Some of it was pseudo security. The Sheraton was next to still another onvention center where political training was being conducted. Both were accessible through a shopping mall. However, guards at the Sheraton entrance prevented anyone but hotel guests with special cards from entering from the mall. The rest of us had to go outside and enter through the front of the hotel, where no one stopped or searched us. From there we could go to the second floor, where most of public events were held, and out the door that the guards wouldn't let us enter.

Often security was just an excuse for stupidity. While walking down the hall at the Fleet Center that led to the press filing room, I saw a cart of Teresa signs roll out. That's a good shot I thought and pulled out my camera. No photographs, a young-woman-in-charge told me. "Security." A few other press people gathered around. One took out his camera and went up close to take what we all saw as a simple atmospheric photo. A DNC staffer jumped on the cart to put his body between the camera and the signs.

The Protests

It has become a tradition to have a protest march on Sunday before each convention. In the past, the biggest marches have been at the Democratic Convention, even though the protestors are more likely to vote Democratic than Republican. I missed this year's march against the Irag occupation organized by ANSWER due to my late arrival. It wasn't much of a march, which was predictable. No one doubts that it was the Republican Party that was responsible for the invasion of Iraq; the New York demonstration will draw out the crowd.

After the 1968 Democratic convention left the Chicago police looking like bad guys, convention city police set-up protest areas for those who have something to say while the party people are in town. These are never acceptable to the protestors. The squabble always goes to court, where a judge decides what is sufficiently within sight and sound of the convention arena to satisfy the First Amendment.

In Boston, the designated protest area was a narrow stretch of land underneath the elevated train outside the Fleet Center. It looked nearby on a map, but was a labyrinthine walk away. Monday night I could hear the sounds of protest from inside the security perimeter, but couldn't see anything and couldn't get there.

Tuesday I walked to the Fleet Center guided by a series of yellow-shirted volunteers who marked out the shortest walking route. Once there, I found the protest area, with more signs hanging from the fences than protestors listening to the speakers.

A strange group wearing T-shirts that proclaimed God Hates Fags was holding forth from the speakers stand, verbally and visually. "Thank God for September 11" said one sign. While it was clear that they thought Democrats were faglovers, I couldn't figure out what that had to do with downing the World Trade Center.

Neither could the three cops who were hanging out next to the fence. I stopped to take their photo next to a sign that said "End the Occupation of Iraq," and one asked me to send him a copy. Nearby another sign declared this to be a "Protest Prison."

Those who wanted the people going inside the Fleet Center to see their signs did better by standing along the route to the metal detectors. There was plenty of room on either side of the fences for signs, stickers and banners (none of which could be carried inside).

In the Fleet Center night I ran into Medea Benjamin and friends, dressed in their trademark pink. The Code Pink women have been doing spontaneous non-violent protests before and after the Iraq invasion. I asked if they were planning one here, and was told to be at the daily convention press briefing the next morning. I was, but the pink ladies were all no-shows.

Later I ran into them at the Sheraton, and was told to come again the next day. History repeated itself. I sat in the front row, camera ready, but my advance warning was a pink herring. Their only appearance was the unfurling of a banner on the floor that read "End the Occupation of Iraq" as Teresa Heinz Kerry spoke Tuesday night.

While I commend their ingenuity on getting it past the security searches and onto the floor, I'm not sure anyone saw that banner apart from the gendarmes who threw them out. I had a good view of the audience from the writing press stand, and whatever unauthorized banner was out there was obscured by thousands of red Teresa signs. They would have gotten more attention unfurling it at the morning press briefing.

On the way to the Fleet Center I saw a small gathering of Vietnam Veterans Against Kerry, who had spurned the protest zone. Many of them were Vietnamese. They wore signs which said "Benedict Kerry Betrayed Vietnam Veterans." The speaker called Kerry a traitor to his country, among other things. This group is small, but it will plague Kerry for the rest of his campaign.

Kerry isn't hiding his anti-war work; it's in his official campaign bio. But he isn't promoting it either, even though his most fervent support comes from anti-war activists. (A CBS delegate poll found that 93 percent of the delegates felt that "the war with Iraq was not worth the loss of life.") Rather he's trying to finesse the whole thing by coming out strong for national defense. That's a narrow plank to walk.

The most effective protests were more reminders than protests. The pro-choice women were everywhere. Sponsored by NARAL and Planned Parenthood, they passed out stickers and buttons at the Sheraton, on the streets and inside the Fleet Center. Abortion is a litmus test issue for both parties; no Democrat can run for President who isn't pro-choice and no Republican who isn't pro-life. Just in case you didn't know that, the pro-choice women were there to remind you.

Equally effective but completely outside the convention were the Falun Gong. On the Boston commons in full view of the street, practioners acted out the different tortures they receive for their beliefs in China. The sat in fake cages and bled fake blood. Printed signs described in detail the destruction of individuals by Chinese authorities. Did they have any trouble getting a permit, I asked. None whatsoever, I was told.

One result of the 1964 revolution is that yesterday's protestors are today's Democrats. Delores Huerta, co-organizer of the United Farm Workers, is heading Women for Kerry. The late Fannie Lou Hamer, the MFDP leader who became famous for telling the world that "I question America" while outside the 1964 Democratic Convention, was celebrated on Tuesday night inside the 2004 convocation with a poem by Maya Angelou and a video tribute.

Her political descendants play major rolls in the Democratic Party. In 1964 blacks were 2.8 percent of Democratic delegates; in 2004 they were 20.1 percent; 57 percent of these were women. Alice Huffman, president of the California NAACP, was in charge of the entire convention as Chair of the DNCC. Two of the three women who have pursued the Democratic nomination for President were
African-Americans. Black Democratic women have their own PAC; its reception at the Sheraton was packed.

The Parallel Conventions

Another new tradition are parallel conventions, paid for by private parties or organizations. These change from convention to convention so lack the continuity of the main event. They are held in the convention city during the same week to take advantage of the gathering of press, protestors, politicians and persons of prominence.

This year the left wing of the Democratic Party spent three days talking about how to Take Back America at a hotel in Cambridge. There isn't much of a line between the left wing of the party and its center. Here were many of the sentiments and signs delegates would have liked to wave at the Fleet Center, had they been permitted to bring their own. Many of the best known speakers served in the Clinton Administration (Robert Reich) or also addressed the Democratic Convention (Jesse Jackson, Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich). They were supplemented by numerous elected officials and union presidents (including John Sweeney), plus a few veteran activists. If Kerry wins, most of them will be White House insiders, not convention outsiders.

Meeting a little further away and a bit further to the left, former Nader and Kucinich supporters formed the Progressive Democrats of America. Viewing Nader's candidacy as a "wake-up call," they argue that supporting Kerry is the way to transform the Democratic Party, but believe that beating Bush is the issue this time. If Kerry wins, they'll still be outsiders.

At still another convention center on the other side of Boston, 3,147 Revolutionary Women also held their inaugural event in Boston on Tuesday. Describing itself as a "nonprofit membership organization" to advance the progressive, political leadership of women, RW was founded and is run by Bostonian Barbara Lee, a philanthropist and "social justice activist" committed to women's empowerment.

The long list of female luminaries who addressed the workshops or the afternoon rally surpassed those at the official DNCC women's meetings. I sampled each of the workshops; those with the biggest names had the largest attendance. The workshops on how to do practical politics were the smallest. In the exhibit area the booth set up to support Hilary Clinton had the largest crowd. Women won't be revolutionary until they see practical political skills as more important than stars.

In the same center at the same time, the venerable Emily's List held its usual convention $250 per ticket fundraiser. I arrived just as the women were pouring into the streets after it was over so I can't tell you about how great it was. But I did make Emily's breakfast on Tuesday morning for women "political newsmakers and journalists," where the lesser female luminaries came to schmooze. I sat down with Ellie Smeal to talk about whether feminists were integrated into the Democratic Party or not (she said no, I thought yes), chatted with Ann Lewis and Susan Turnbull, and picked up a Ms. guide to Women's events at the Democratic National Convention. That was a great place to find out what women were doing; would that Emily had hosted such a breakfast every morning.

Over all, there was something for almost everyone at this year's Democratic Convention. You didn't even have to be a Democrat.

Editor's Note: Jo's most recent book is At Berkeley in the 60s; The Education of an Activist by Indiana University Press, 2004.

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