Plan for Chicago

By Rob Lyons

So after visiting the Republican Convention in Milwaukee last month, I’ll be in Chicago this week to check out the Democrats.  I’ll stay at the Ancient Dragon Zen Gate Zen Center, thanks to a generous invitation from Laurie Hogetsu Belzer, the guiding dharma teacher.  Sunday morning I’ll give a dharma talk and then immediately after I’ll be on a Zoom call with fellow Board members back at Berkeley Zen Center.

Sunday evening I’ll be at a dinner set up by Eve Pinsker, a sociologist and anthropologist whom I met last month.  Eve is a member of ADZG, and was intrigued by my blogging project.  She told me, and this was news to me, that the approach I’m using is that of an ethnographer, that is, a social scientist who immerses himself in a social system and uses his own subjective experience, as an enmeshed observer, as part of the material being considered.  Apparently this act of acknowledging yourself and being forthright about your own subjectivity is distinct from the classic form of sociology, where the observer/analyst dons a cloak of invisibility, and his observations and analysis and Truth are presented as if received from on high (cue Morgan Freeman or Ken Burns . . . ).   I have to admit this seemed a little grandiose to me, that I might be an ethnographer:  after all, I’m just making this up as I go.  I thought what I was doing was more akin to Montaigne or the gonzo journalism of Tom Wolfe or Hunter Thompson – absent the cannibalism or the tranche of reality-bending drugs, and with a soupçon of mindfulness thrown in . . . 

I learned a few things from my trip to Milwaukee.  First, that everything is a fit subject for observation.  Since I’m here for the Convention, much of what I’m going to be watching and participating in and considering and evaluating, much of what I’m reacting to, will naturally have to do with the political project of the Convention, in the larger context of the election campaign, in the still larger context of the nation as a whole and what we’re all doing with ourselves these days.  But I’m also in a new city and meeting new people.  I’m in an exploratory mode.   And I hope to look at all this through the lens of mindfulness practice.

Second, I really need to extend myself more.  The Milwaukee moment that may have had the biggest impact on me was when I crashed the Principles First meeting and listened to the desperation of the Never Trumpers.  This only came about because I went out exploring.  So I’ll need to do more of that, get out more and poke around.  I wasn’t able to be as outgoing and forthcoming and engaging with strangers as I would have liked, this will take a bit of work because I feel naturally reserved – but maybe this task I’ve set for myself will help me overcome my natural reticence.  Blogging can help you get out of your shell.   

When I was in London earlier this month I met up with my friend Larraine MacNamara-MacGraw who was in town visiting her daughter and family.  We went to the Tate Modern.  There was a Yoko Ono show and in one room on one wall was a video of her Cut Piece.  Yoko kneels on a stage, silently, while members of the audience approach with scissors and gradually, snip by snip, cut away her clothing – the sleeves of her blouse, the collar, her pants, her socks – to leave her more and more naked and exposed.  On the other side of the room was another work, Bag Piece.  Two fabric bags, each about six or seven feet tall, hung from hooks.  Both black.  They looked like shrouds or overgrown shapeless sweaters.  Participants were invited to take one of the bags and climb into it, and then do whatever they wanted.  I put on a bag.  It was made of a loose-knit and flowing material, and you could kind of see out of it at your surroundings.  I began to move and then to dance.  I’m not a dancer.  I started hamming it up and leaping around, striking poses, acting like a chimpanzee, a belly dancer.  I was Michael Jackson, I was Ian Anderson, Chris Farley, Jim Carrey.  I was free to do whatever I chose and I found that masking my normal face (my original face?) and taking on an anonymous persona brought forth a strong and energetic and joyous response.  What fun.  I think this blogging business may offer some of these same superpowers.  

I learned that the process of writing sharpens and heightens my powers of observation, and the process of observation in turn, as Schrödinger’s Cat teaches us, produces tangible effects in the world.  Yet I do feel a bit cautious about shooting from the hip with these blogs (especially now that I’m an ethnographer), because I feel that I should have things thought out before they’re published, they should be trenchant and rigorously reasoned, internally consistent, and brimful of gravitas, and above all I should appear well read . . .  But the hell with it:  let’s just put on the black bag and write down what comes up, and see what happens.

Monday will be the March on the DNC, which promises to be much much bigger than Milwaukee’s March on the RNC – I’ve heard it said that a crowd of 25,000 people is expected.  Like the Milwaukee march, this one is billed as “family friendly,” which I now realize means that there will be lots of marshals and lots of planning and coordination by the march organizers, to keep demonstrators from becoming overly demonstrative.  Violence will not be tolerated.  At the same time this march can’t help but be loud and impassioned.  I’ve heard that Chicago has the largest Palestinian population in the world, outside Palestine.  The suffering, devastation, and injustice in Gaza, and our complicity in it, stand as the issue for our time.  More than 14,000 children killed.  Just let that sink in.  We were talking about this the other day, that every generation has its galvanizing issue that brings young people into political activism.  In my day it was the Vietnam War, and this was followed in turn by the Women’s movement, the Gay Rights movement, protests over the conflict in Central America, the Iraq War, the Occupy movement, Black Lives Matter, and now Gaza (but to name a few).  These causes bring out the moral indignation in young people of high character, and harden and toughen their resolve to bring about social change.  In my case, these early impassioned actions set in my character a strong urge to act in this realm, to protest, to organize, to work for positive change, which has endured for over 50 years.  With the Gaza protests we are seeing a whole now generation of activists awakening, and we can only hope that Kamala Harris is listening and prepared to respond.

Back in the convention hall, Biden will be the lead speaker Monday night, and Hilary will speak as well.  Tuesday Harris and Walz will be having a rally in Milwaukee, so I got a ticket and I’ll be taking the train up to Milwaukee and joining some friends to be in the same room with her.  That should be a spectacle.  Back in Chicago, Barack Obama will speak that night.  Then Wednesday Bill Clinton will give an address, before Tim Walz speaks as the VP nominee.  Thursday night will belong to Kamala.

There will be lots of other actions and events throughout the week, I’m just now cataloging them.  And the Democrats have also set up a massive exhibition space in McCormick Place Convention Center that they’ve dubbed “DemPalooza, ” that will be open to the public.  Lots of tables and booths and exhibits, you can get a manicure, you can craft bracelets, you can score lots of campaign swag.  And our friends at Postcards to Swing States will have a big booth there, so I’ll be sure to stop by and say hello.  

Plus Chicago has loads of other stuff to do.  Until 1984 when it was overtaken by Los Angeles, Chicago was the second largest city in the US – for over 90 years.  It has a long and deep history and loads of cultural institutions:  the Field Museum, Museum of Science and Industry, Museum of Contemporary Art, jazz and blues clubs, extraordinary and historic architecture, Navy Pier, the Sears Tower – plus all the neighborhoods and the thick rich gumbo of cultures and communities, with over 40 languages spoken!  And two baseball teams – though the White Sox, Obama’s favorite, now stand at 30-93, the worst record in the majors by far, which if sustained would result in a 122-loss season, the worst in MLB history – like EVER!   I may try to catch a Cubs game, they’re playing the Tigers this week. It promises to be a busy time . . .