by Rob Lyons
Today was the first day of the Democratic Convention, and it began with a march.
Last month I witnessed the Coalition to March on the RNC in Milwaukee, and here in Chicago I expected to see more of the same, but bigger and rowdier. I took the El to Union Square, the ride was smooth and the passengers didn’t appear to have the same harried look they have in NYC . . . maybe having an elevated train and having the sunlight stream through the windows elevates people’s moods?
When I got off on the platform I could hear the chants from a few blocks away, and it sounded like a big crowd. As I made my way into the park I was handed flyers and pamphlets by Communist party reps, saw a group of young women walk by wearing black t-shirts “US out of Korea” . . . but the focus of the rally and subsequent march, virtually the only thing people talked and chanted about and bore on their signs and placards, was the horror in Gaza. There were a few signs about the Chicago Police Department. Otherwise all about Gaza. Given that the Coalition consisted of more than 200 groups, there must have been a load of arm-twisting behind the scenes to make sure that this rally and march were so disciplined in their message.
There were lots of groups. Jewish Voice for Peace. Saoirse Don Phalaistin (Irish Americans for Palestine). Christians for Ceasefire. SDS. Peace groups, labor groups, LBGT+ groups . . . probably about 5,000 in attendance. There was a line of probably 200 people for 7 porta-potties, the line stretched across the entire park. News choppers overhead. Genocide Joe on signs and t-shirts. Cornell West spoke for a few minutes about reality + spirituality, love. “Democratic Party shame on you!”
I struck up a conversation with Wendy T from Detroit, she grew up in Evanston, she was a student at the University of Chicago in 1968 and marched at the Democratic Convention, she saw the police brutally attack the marchers on the first night but she escaped unharmed; and on the second night on the march down Michigan Avenue she saw the police snipers on the roofs of buildings, more beatings. The next day she got on a plane to Paris where she was to study a semester abroad, only to walk right into the 1968 student riots, general strike, and social upheaval that rocked France. Eventually she dropped out of school and came home and went to work for GM on the line, assembling cars, putting together axles. She became president of her local union and an organizer for 30 years, and had attended lots of demonstrations along the way.
After an interminable delay we formed up and marched down Maypole to another park, a scant few blocks away from the United Center and well in earshot of the delegates. It took over an hour to get from one park to the other. Police on bicycles formed mobile barricades all around the route, a very tight perimeter. All Chicago police, unlike at Milwaukee where police were recruited from other cities. I was told that everyone in the police department had their days off canceled this week.
I met up with my dear friend Rita Archibald, whom I hadn’t seen in twenty years since my days at BPF. Rita is an old peace organizer and trainer and nurse who used to live in the Bay Area, who organized protests against Diablo Canyon, the Iraq War, the Concord Naval Weapons Station, helped to organize the Women’s March in 2017 . . . she and I sat by the side of the march as it passed by, and she looked on with the eye of a practiced organizer and critiqued the march design (you want to keep the march together, ideally six abreast, so that the march seems longer and larger).
When it was over, there were police units in yellow dayglo vests all around the march and the park. There was also a line of snowplows parked along a side street; these were on hand in case a solid barrier was needed to stop a surging mob (the trucks still loaded with salt for the frozen winter roads). Apparently only four people were arrested all afternoon. The passion of the march was intense, but there was no feeling of danger or menace, it was pretty chill throughout. Afterwards Rita and I grabbed some food in a nearby Mediterranean restaurant and there were a lot of young people there from the march, most in keffiyeh headscarves, lots of laughter, bright, burbling upbeat energy.
I went back to the Ancient Dragon house and tuned in to the live Convention broadcast.
Warriors head coach Steve Kerr spoke. Kerr had won multiple championships in the 90’s with Michael Jordan as a member of the Bulls, and so he knew the United Center well, having played there. He was fresh from coaching the USA basketball team to a gold medal at the Paris Olympics. He spoke about leadership, and teamwork, how a group of 12 Americans who had competed fiercely against one another for their entire careers, could join forces and play together as a team. He poked fun at Tim Walz, one coach to another. And then he concluded by saying that after Election Day had ended and the votes had been tallied, we would learn the results – and in the words of Steph Curry it would be “Night Night” for Donald Trump (miming Curry’s Night Night gesture).
UAW President Shawn Fain recalled that Biden and Harris stood on the picket line in support of auto workers. Fain removed his shirt to reveal a red t-shirt (an echo of Hulk Hogan at the RNC) with the message: “Trump is a scab. Vote Harris.”
AOC gave a fiery speech saying that Harris will fight for the middle class because she is from middle class, and had even worked in McDonalds when she was in college. She called Trump a “two-bit union buster.”
One of Kamala’s childhood friends spoke about how when they were children Kamala had stood up for her against a bully – and in passing she mentioned that the two of them had gone together to kindergarten at the Berkwood Hedge School in Berkeley – the same school where my young friends Moses and Etia go to the Monkey Business daycamp during the holidays.
Hilary got the crowd all worked up and in a segment that brought back memories of MLK’s “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech – where he had seen the promised land – she described how she and others had been banging on the glass ceiling for so long that there were big cracks in it, and on the other side she could see Kamala Harris taking the oath of office. The crowd broke into a chant of “Lock Him Up!” which Hilary clearly relished.
Jim Clyburn, Jamie Raskin and Jasmine Crockett all spoke. Three sets of speakers spoke about their experience with abortion, one where the couple had to wait at home while the wife miscarried – and one young woman who told the story of how she’d been raped by her stepfather when she was 12, and if this had happened now, in a state that had outlawed abortion, she would have been forced to give birth to the baby. “What is so beautiful about a child having to carry her parent’s child?”
Andy Beshear spoke. Raphael Warnock spoke. He noted that he and Jon Osoff had both won their Senate runoff elections in Georgia on January 5 (giving control of the Senate to the Democrats) while the next day, January 6, rioters stormed the Capitol. “Donald Trump is a plague on the American conscience” he declared. He called forth his preacher’s diction, voice rising, “I need my neighbor’s children to be OK so my children will be OK” he said, “I need children in the inner city, and suburbia, and north, and south, and children in Gaza and children in Israel and to be OK, because we are all God’s children. We can heal the broken, we can heal the land, we can heal the nation and we can heal the world.”
First Lady Jill Biden came on and praised her husband, and then Ashley Biden, Joe’s daughter, told a story about how as a child she was taken down to the train station one evening, and the train arrived, and the door to the train opened, and there was Joe and she ran into his arms, and then her mom and brothers brought out a birthday cake for her right there on the train platform and lit the candles, and they had a brief party for her, and then Joe got back on the next train and went right back to DC and went back to work. She described Joe as the OG girl dad, who valued and trusted women. A courageous heart can heal a family, a nation, a world.
Then Joe came on. In many ways it was a canned stump speech, but bittersweet and poignant. After all, this was his swan song and his last impassioned defense of his presidency, his whole career, and his life’s work. He recalled watching the early progress of Trump’s presidency, when hate was on the march in America. And then after Charlottesville, when a young women was killed, Trump declared that there were “very fine people on both sides.” Joe immediately recalled the words of his dead son Beau and realized he couldn’t stand on the sidelines. He decided to run and replace Trump as president.
He went on to talk about the the accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration, about strengthening the middle class, about foreign policy, about the crime rate, immigration, and gun violence, about infrastructure and the CHIPS act, about union labor. He also mentioned Gaza: that he and his team had been working around the clock to get a cease fire, to end this war. “Those protestors out on the street have a point: a lot of innocent people are getting killed.”
He declared that character is destiny. “Kamala and Doug are people of great character, as are Tim and Gwen. Choosing Kamala was the first decision I made upon winning the nomination, and it was the best decision I ever made.” One wonders if in future years he may revisit this, and say that his best decision was deciding to step aside to give Kamala her opening.
Now, I have a confession to make. I think of myself as a fairly even-tempered fellow, and I’m not often bumped around by emotion like a Boeing 737 hitting wind shear (as happened when we flew in on Saturday) But this opening day of the convention left me feeling wrung out and spent by the end of it. When I was a kid, whenever anyone in my family cried, me or my brothers or sisters, my mother would say “The bladder is close to your eye,” meaning, as we understood it, that we were acting emotionally, that we were too easily triggered, and that we were being excessively demonstrative and self-indulgent. Watching this first night of the convention, the bladder was close to my eye. Hearing all these these tear-jerker stories and rousing emotional speeches by some of the most talented orators of our era, pulling on the heart strings: I fell for it hook line and sinker. I was deeply moved, and I feel connected to these people and their noble project. But what will come of this? Will it motivate me? Is it a transitory and passing thing, a squall, a late-afternoon thundershower, a good cry? Will it roust me out of bed in the morning and set me on the road to work tirelessly to defeat Donald Trump, day after day? I don’t know, we’ll see. I hope so.
