by Rob Lyons
DNC Day 2, Tuesday 8.20.24
Tuesday I took an afternoon train from Chicago to Milwaukee with my buddy Rita and we talked throughout the trip about our experiences (good and bad) with left-leaning organizations – she with various peace activist groups and me with the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. We both had anecdotes about Ram Dass . . . Once we reached Wisconsin we went our separate ways. I connected with my fellow Buddhist Election Retreat organizer and longtime Milwaukee resident (and former Alderwoman) Larraine McNamara-McGraw. We buzzed through the Milwaukee Public Market: produce, fish, wine bar, Mexican food, deli, flowers, candies, great stuff! Earlier this Spring Larraine and I had run into each other in London and had visited London’s Burough Market – a public market that has been at the foot of the London Bridge since 1756!
Larraine and I drove over to the Fiserv Arena, home of the 2021 NBA Champion Milwaukee Bucks, set in the middle of the Deer District (Deer Park?). Fiserv was also the site of the Republican National Convention last month – though I never got close enough to get a good look at it. We were there to attend a rally with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. This during the middle of the Democratic Convention down the road in Chicago. As it happened, Kamala managed to pack TWO ARENAS to capacity on the same night – one in Milwaukee and the other in Chicago. (Oh, how these Democrats love to tweak Trump about crowd size.)
Somehow after going prematurely into the Arena through airport-style security and then up and down escalators and stairs and actually going back outside again through the jostling crowd (everyone but me trying to get in), I found my way to a special table and managed to register and score a coveted floor pass. I went back in and reconnected with Larraine. We made our way down to the floor of the arena, where the runway was set up. A friend of Larraine’s kindly brought us to a section of bleachers right next to the portal where Tim and Kamala would later make their entrances. Though we were on the floor we were able to sit through the program. This was no small thing, since it lasted over two hours. (At the end of the evening as she was speaking Kamala noticed that one of the groundlings below her had collapsed, and stopped to call for a medic “Come on folks, let’s move aside and make a passageway . . . “). There were also several kids around us, aged 3 to 10. I have no idea how the poor kids managed to make it through an interminable evening of boring grownup stuff punctuated by yelling and cheering, they were real troopers. I wonder what they’ll remember about this later in life. Probably the blinking multicolored bracelets that we were all given, like the kind they have at Taylor Swift concerts.
The bulk of the program consisted of a State-by-State celebratory roll call, piped in from in Chicago where the DNC was doing its thing at that very moment. We watched it live on the Jumbotron, the ultimate watch party. From Alabama through Wyoming with side trips through DC, Puerto Rico, the Marianna Islands, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa, each state had its own walk-up theme music, curated by a DJ in a straw boater and satin cerulean blue suit with matching shirt (you can check out the playlist HERE and a video of the full hour+ roll call HERE). It was a virtual trade show, each state flogging its historical and cultural treasures: New York the birthplace of the Women’s Movement, the LGBTQ Movement, and the Environmental Justice Movement; Maryland the birthplace of Harriet Tubman, Thurgood Marshall and Frederick Douglass; Massachusetts the birthplace of the American Revolution, Hawai’i the birthplace of Barack Obama . . . with celebrities and politicians and Democratic icons: Gretchen Whitmer (MI), Josh Shapiro (PA), Andy Beshear (KY), Spike Lee (NY), Wendell Pierce (LA), the Justins (TN), . . . the West Virginia delegation featured one woman 83 years old and another 18, the one determined to protect everything she’d fought for in the past, and the other to fight for her future – they chanted together as they pledged the 24 WV delegates to Kamala Harris. When Wisconsin was announced the crowd inside Fiserv went bonkers, and we rose as one, waving our “FREEDOM” placards and crying out for joy. And of course back in Chicago our Wisconsin delegates were decked out in cheese-heads . . . California, which had passed when first called upon, concluded the roll call. Governor Gavin Newsom, of the “Great State of Nancy Pelosi” took the mic and pledged its 482 delegates to its native daughter Kamala Harris. I found myself on my feet, bellowing, overcome with emotion, my chest full to bursting, raising my arms and sawing the air . . .
Then Kamala came in and gave her speech, and we were on our feet again, all of us, cheering and roaring and chanting and celebrating. Celebrating her, celebrating this moment. Celebrating the rediscovery of the joy and hope that we remembered from the Obama years. Celebrating a future of possibility, and freedom from the kind of dominion and bitterness and hatred and oppression that Donald Trump represented for all of us.
Electrifying. Mesmerizing. Intoxicating. Out of body. Mindless. Exhilarating.
I confess I lost it. Other times in life when I lost it? When my oldest son Jack was born. When I got married. When Nixon resigned. When Obama was elected. When Biden was elected. When the 49ers and Red Sox and Giants and Warriors won historic victories. At funerals and wakes for my father, my friends. Often these experiences involved being immersed in a crowd; or overcoming adversity after a protracted struggle; or reaching an historic pivot point, a life changer.
In the crowd last night, a word or phrase by the speaker would spark a chant, which would then catch fire in one spot and spread: “Not Going Back,” “Lock Him Up,” “When We Fight: We Win,” “USA.” I’m not an early adopter, and I often have to overcome my natural reserve to begin chanting – but when I do I feel conjoined to my fellows, I have fewer guardrails, I feel liberated and exuberant. There’s a “we” feeling and a countervailing “they” feeling.
Last night we were a mob, albeit a joy mob. Here, it felt like our communal loss of self-control was innocent, since after all, in the words of Elvis Costello: “What’s so bad about peace, love and understanding?” But it’s useful to examine how this works, and to recognize that this event was a multimedia experience specifically engineered to bring forth these emotions from the crowd and inculcate this sense of connection and fealty. When I go to the movies I’ll sometimes take a moment, in the middle of the film, to look around at my fellow moviegoers and study their faces, all in a common trance. We’re all children of Richard Wagner – who used the term Gesamtkunstwerk to describe his conception of opera as a total work of art, one that reached all our senses: story, characters, music, lyric, costumes, set design, lighting. This obviously predated movies or rock concerts or political rallies, but it established the formula. Last night, the music, the thunderous sound system, bottomless subwoofers quaking the whole building, pummeling my bones and organs. The vivid saturated red white and blue, the sparkling and flashing bracelets, the Jumbotron and the roar and people leaping to their feet. The moving tale of the mixed race girl who grew up in a middle class home in Oakland and Berkeley, paired with the son of a farmer who served in the army reserve and taught school and coached the football team . . . the parable of how they both arrived at this place by dint of hard work and grit. A classic fairy tale.
This same power to seduce and incite is often used to stir feelings of bitterness, fear, anger, hatred, which in a similar mob setting at another place and time can result in a far different outcome – just look at the January 6 mob. I can understand why Trump and his ilk are so fixated on crowds and crowd sizes, because these rallies are a power in and of themselves, each individual at such a rally brings his/her spirit and pours it into the community cauldron to form the daemon that constitutes the spirit of the room. The January 6 daemon attacked the Capitol, the daemons of Nazi and Fascist crowds propelled Germany and Italy into World War. Would that our Joy Daemon reach out into the wards and neighborhoods and precincts and Get Out the Vote in November.
We all left the arena in Milwaukee before the evening had ended in Chicago, so most of us missed the Obamas delivering their twin keynote speeches. As I was waiting for my Greyhound bus to return to Chicago, I happened into the lobby of the Doubletree Hotel during Michelle’s speech, and heard her declare that “Hope is making a Comeback!”
It’s important to mention that of the roughly 4,700 delegates, none voted for another candidate, but 30 delegates from eight states did cast their votes as “Uncommitted” to register a symbolic protest against the Biden administration’s support of Israel in its ghastly war in Gaza. This crisis, this moral and ethical and political and international crisis, is of paramount importance, and it must be dealt with in a direct and honorable way. We must work to save the lives of the beleaguered and persecuted Palestinians, murdered in their own communities. We must work to address the deliberate stalemate in negotiations, the lethal game that Netanyahu is playing to save his own skin, and the Gordian tangle of interests and histories and suffering.
This afternoon we listened to a podcast by Not Another Bomb, and one person spoke of the need for an Inside Strategy and an Outside Strategy. Elect a receptive administration and then work inside that Administration to negotiate a ceasefire and an arms embargo, while outside groups keep up unrelenting pressure through protests and boycotts and ad campaigns and other actions. These approaches do work: recall the Civil Rights campaign, the anti-Vietnam War campaign, the anti-Apartheid campaign. First let’s take care of Step One, and dispose of Donald Trump. Then we can turn to the tragedy of Gaza.
Through all this we each of us need our own Inside/Outside strategy, sitting in meditation and cultivating awareness and compassion, while acting in the world to relieve the suffering of all beings.
