Cage Heat
National Review Online, July 30 2004
Boston, Mass.—It was, said U.S. District Judge Douglas P. Woodlock, a man who has, quite obviously, never seen the inside of a Manhattan apartment, a "grim, mean and oppressive space," but, on a sunny Thursday afternoon, the fenced-in "cage" designed to hold demonstrators protesting at the Democratic National Convention (or, at least, haranguing the delegates as they go to and fro) is practically empty. "Pens are for animals," say the signs, but this is the pen of a Kentucky Fried Chicken's dreams, airy, spacious, an acre to roam where, what's more, the human inhabitants are, I suspect, almost all vegetarians.
Now and again, there are moments of excitement. A small group bears down on the wire barrier with bolt-cutters, bluster, and bravado. "Up with dissent, down with de fence, up with dissent down with de fence." Boston's Finest roll their eyes, smirk, and mutter into radios. Snip. Cut. Chop. More muttering into radios. Snip again, cut again, chop again, and, wild cheering, it's through to the outer boundary. Boston's Finest move in. A tussle, a scuffle, maybe an arrest. Other protesters film the struggle. News media film the protesters filming the struggle. The police prevail. The thin metal line holds. The other, licensed lunatics, the ones, you know, caged inside the Fleet Center, are safe, free to continue plotting and planning for victory unmolested, their dreams and delusions undisturbed by demonstrators.
Drama done, the cage slips back into torpor, the only sound to be heard an old sweet song, "We Shall Overcome," over and over and over again. A choir? Eager activists? No, just a guy at a podium with a cassette player and a mike. The tune echoes through the loudspeakers placed all through that empty space, loudspeakers designed for the crowd that has never turned up, loudspeakers that fail to rally the few faithful who linger and lurk, but do not deign to sing along.
Only the posters and the placards, tied to the wire, stuck to the pillars, and hanging from a gate, are doing their duty, stolidly proclaiming their message, conventional (Repeal The Patriot Act!), inspirational, (Tear Down This Wall!), insulting, and, suitably for the age of Teresa Heinz Kerry, multilingual (Democrats—No Cojones!), anarchistic (Don't Vote, It Only Encourages Them!), paranoid, (Free Speech—The Second Victim of 9/11!), surprising (Bush-Cheney 04!), adventurous (Polygamy Now!), honest (This Is A Farce!), strange (Wilderness!), and desperate (Flee The Pen!).
Those who have fled the pen can be found nearby, clad in the cranky clown costume (keffiyehs, alarming piercings, Jesse James face masks, making-a-point make-up, white man's dreadlocks) of anti-globalization street theater everywhere, as they gamely, if a little lamely (there was more enthusiastically vicious trouble later: with my usual keen journalistic instincts I had already left the scene), go through their paces beneath the indifferent gaze of the yuppies sitting in the sports bars that spill out onto the sidewalk. Drums sound, slogans are screamed and cops, stoic in that sci-fi-riot-squad gear that they wear nowadays, are taunted by those that they are sworn to protect. A solemn girl sits cross-legged in the street, wearing a gag. I'd like to ask her why, but....
Others indulge in darker mutterings, drearily familiar accusations from this country's sour, distorted foreign-policy debate, "Halliburton," "oil," and, wait for it, "lies," all make their now customary appearance. As the afternoon warms up, placards dance somewhere out there on the lunatic fringe, denouncing the wickedness of the dollar, announcing the candidacy of Nader, warning of the imminence of Hell, and, weirdly even in this company, discussing some sort of conspiracy involving Yevgeny Primakov, the former KGB agent who rose to be Yeltsin's prime minister. And let's not forget all those occupations (unless they are of Lebanon). End the occupation of Iraq! End the occupation of Palestine! End the occupation of Haiti! Yes, Haiti. Tibet, meanwhile, must be freed. Quite how, however, is not explained.
And in an era of revived, and often highly organized, protest, the activists have support people, an entourage, staff. There are "medics" with paper red crosses and healing bottles of, uh, water, and, scattered throughout the crowd and clad in a green so bright (I think) that it made me grateful to be color-blind, the "legal observers," socialist attorneys, two strikes with a third for self-importance, from the National Lawyers Guild (an "association dedicated to the need for basic change in the structure of our political and economic system") scribbling, scribbling, scribbling mysterious commentary into the notebooks that they all seem to carry.
Suddenly, there's a disturbance, photographers, police, movement. Dennis Kucinich has arrived. Sanity at last.
Well, these things are relative.