by Rob Lyons, Thursday July 18, 2024
Months ago, when the Milwaukee Mayor and Aldermen were sold on the idea of hosting this convention, they were told it would pump $200 million in outside spending into the local economy. The reality has fallen far short. Many convention delegates stayed out of town. Some took to Lake Geneva for example, a summer resort destination an hour south of Milwaukee, sometimes referred to as a “second hub for the RNC.” Others stayed in Madison and schlepped into town every day. Those who remained in the City were put up, most of them, in hotels near the arena or actually within the secure area. We did see a few delegates on the streets, recognizable by their clothing, the way they carried themselves, the credentials lanyards around their necks. But we suspect that many if not most of the other delegates didn’t have much contact with the City itself.
As a matter of policy the Press were shut out of all GOP committee activities and denied access to delegates. The delegates themselves were also shielded from decision making and drafting the Party Platform. We read that upon arriving at the arena, delegates had their cellphones confiscated and sealed in magnetic pouches to prevent leaks. (These same pouches are now used at many schools to keep kids from getting lost in social media during school hours). The platform drafting process was entrusted to a handful of close Trump allies who in the months before the convention gathered at Mar a Lago and created a spare and vague 19-page document that echoes Trump’s rhetorical style. The delegates were presented a completed Platform and directed to endorse it. Which they did.
If the delegates had little contact with Milwaukee and were cordoned off from the business of Platform drafting, they had great access to lobbyists. Corporate donors rented dozens of luxury suites in the arena, high above the floor, threw parties for delegates and wrote checks. According to the Washington Post, over 300 corporate executives and lobbyists attended. “Construction firms, waste management companies, mortgage bankers, trade associations, sugar executives, realtors, home builders, banks, hotel chains, asphalt companies and others are represented . . . “
All this occurred in a bubble, in a controlled environment armored and hardened like Baghdad’s Green Zone, bristling with checkpoints, snipers, police boats on the river, the occasional helicopter. I can’t shake the image of the RNC as a cyst or gall, an area walled off from the rest of Milwaukee, the rest of the body politic. An abscess.
What we saw from the outside was a rigorously regimented spectacle, in which any and all dissent or disagreement was squelched beforehand, with tight top-down stage management and a slick well-produced product piped out on TV.
Meanwhile, in Milwaukee itself, many of the locals seem to have decided to get out of town for the week, to eschew the brouhaha (one of Milwaukee’s nicknames is “Brew City” and their baseball team the Brewers). There were reports from baristas, waiters, police, and others that instead of a surge there might even have been a dropoff in business. There were inconveniences like traffic diversions, freeway offramp closures, motorcades screaming through the streets. The people I talked to in town had little idea what was going on inside the Convention other than what they saw on TV.
At 6:00 this morning I joined Reirin and four others for the morning program at MZC, and afterward I went out for coffee with old friend Susan Winecki, to catch up and make plans for electioneering over the next few months. Mid morning I went with Reirin to the Zao MKE church across the street from U of W Milwaukee, to join in a small rally/press conference by Death Penalty Action. An inmate was executed today in Alabama. So far this year 10 prisoners have been executed in 5 states. I learned that Wisconsin had outlawed the death penalty in 1853, making it the longest continuous death penalty ban in the world. At noon, Susan, Reirin and I joined several others from the Mindfulness Community of Milwaukee, for their weekly River Walk. We set off from the Ecology Center and walked meditatively down to the river, cocoa brown with runoff after several heavy thunderstorms this week. Bird and animal prints in the mud on the riverbank. We walked deliberately back up and around, on paths that went from pillowy loam to wood chips, to decomposed granite, to broken asphalt that looked like a black glacier calving tarry icebergs. Much of the walk was through deciduous broadleaf forest, heavy shade. Several times we came upon a clearing where an impromptu wikiup had been jumbled together out of fallen treelimbs and driftwood. Now and then our guide Paul would ring a meditation bell and we would stop in our tracks and take it all in. Muffled city sounds in the background, traffic, construction, in the foreground the spirited burbling of children, the occasional oh-kah-lee song of the redwing blackbird (ending on a trill). The air damp and thick and soporific, all around us the overwrought voluptuousness of wet July: purple loosestrife, shooting star, white trillium, black-eyed susan, grey-headed coneflower; purple coneflower . . . foliage of every size and shape jostling and elbowing one another other, breathing with moist lungs . . . Milwaukee has a ton of parks, lots of small parks throughout the neighborhoods, one long park lining both banks of the Milwaukee River, plus parks all along the shore of Lake Michigan.
Then Susan took me on a driving tour of Milwaukee’s wealthy Upper East Side: Lake Drive and Prospect Avenue, splendid mansions set in pedicured grounds: self-receiving and self-employing opulence. We drove by Bradford Beach, row after row of beach volleyball nets on the shore of Lake Michigan. The Lake itself stretching to the north and east, feeling more like an ocean than a lake – though without the wave surge and surf of the ocean, and the salt water tidepools and salt water flora and fauna – but a similar size and presence . . . Then back up Downer Avenue and across Newberry Avenue, one of my favorite streets, simple, stately, divided by a generous swath of greensward, wooded with oaks and beeches, dappled shade (I walked this way at dusk and took a video of the lightning bugs to show my young California friends . . . )
Later that afternoon Reirin took me over to the Hephatha Lutheran Church Precinct. This is in 53206, Milwaukee’s poorest zipcode and one of the poorest and most crime- and drug-ridden areas in the US: violence, unemployment, poverty, decaying properties. Brenda Jackson, a Baptist minister, community leader and MICAH board member, took me under her wing. We walked several blocks together, dropping off flyers, putting up lawn signs. “I Will Vote” proclaimed the lawn signs, while the handouts listed the dates and times and places where you could vote, and how you could register to vote (though they stopped short of endorsing any candidate) . . . Brenda has raised five children who in turn have raised 10 grandchildren and 5 more great grandchildren. Brenda taught her boys to respect her and work hard and be careful and thoughtful in the world – “They might have complained about me, at the time” she said, “but they’re alive.” As we worked our way down the block she did all the talking, she has an easy warmth and joy that lit up every single person we ran into – and every one of them a stranger. A seventy year old man setting up his lawn furniture for a cookout, a car full of teenagers at the gas station, an old woman bringing out her garden hose to water some flowers, Brenda greeted all them in a manner so effortless and engaging that it was like sleight of hand – how does she DO this?!? She possesses some magical ability to reach in and touch their hearts, every one, get them smiling, complimenting them, teasing them, finding the human touch . . . We ran out of leaflets and then got the last few people to agree to the last leftover lawn signs and then headed back. Brenda and I shared phone numbers. I’ll be calling her when I return in October for the General Election.
I feel like I’ve seen a lot of Milwaukee in just a few days. Rich, poor, faith communities, artists, working people. I like the feel of the place. It is comfortable and not overblown, easygoing and earnest, good people. I’m looking forward to coming back in the Fall to help Get Out the Vote.
Meanwhile back in the Fiserv Forum the crowd was entertained by Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan. Between them, and including the speech the other night by Sean O’Brien of the Teamsters, something seems weirdly out of joint. I’m reminded of the spinning top in Inception, or the black cat in The Matrix: these are tells that point to a larger problem: something is amiss in the reality field. This is definitely not normal. Am I the only one to notice this?
