DNC Dispatches: Working, Protesting, Crying
DNC Dispatches: Working, Protesting, Crying
Working the Convention
From my seat this evening, high in the upper deck of Time Warner Cable Arena, I had an excellent view of the podium. I had a bird’s-eye view of the stage and, because I was to the side of it, could see the opening behind the stage where speakers entered and exited. Beyond that, I could see the rows of press seating stretching from the floor up into the higher tiers of the arena. Next to these press seats is a large structure built out over the stadium seats and forming the video backdrop for the podium. Above and behind all of this, on a stadium walkway that could only be seen from my section and a few others, was a concession window. I had ordered food here the night before, a box of chicken strips and a cup of fries. The menu was what it would have been for a Carolina Bobcats game, and the employees were the same too. At the baseball stadium in my city, the people working at the concession windows are often young folks. Here they seem to be mainly middle-aged African-American women. Two days before, in his speech to the convention, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka asked his listeners simply to notice the people working to serve the food and clean the spaces at the arena. He asked us to thank them for doing their jobs well.
During Joe Biden’s speech, I happened to look up, behind the podium and the video screen and the press seats, to the concession window. It appeared to have just closed, and the women working there were cleaning the counter and prepping for evening’s end. They were moving like people tired from a busy day of working on their feet. In my field of vision at that moment were, at once, an extraordinary sight—the sitting Vice President of the United States accepting his party’s nomination for high office—and an ordinary one—people cleaning up and preparing to leave a job after a long day’s work.
Voices of Protest
I have witnessed protests here in Charlotte, by individuals and by organized groups, but I did not see mass action first hand. Instead, I saw individuals carrying placards for legalizing marijuana and those holding signs to encourage an end to fossil fuels. There was a large banner advocating an end to war draped over the side of a parking garage and, at an intersection two blocks from the arena, there was a sit-in by those calling for justice for immigrants and an end to the fear under which they live.
In my limited experience, however, the most visible and vocal protesters were religious opponents of abortion rights and gay marriage. And it’s clear that they are well organized. They carry signs that say “Democrats attack children, morals, family.” They carry large and gruesome photos depicting small, mutilated bodies (I heard people asking: how do they take those photos?). They have bullhorns held by men and signs held by women that read, “I regret my abortion.”
On the terribly hot Tuesday of the convention, I was attempting to enter the secure zone near the arena through a choke point for pedestrian traffic presided over by Secret Service agents. There was a Planned Parenthood rally taking shape, and many people had t-shirts on that said, “Yes, we plan!” with a “2012” where the zero was the silhouette of a monthly pack of birth control bills. As I approached the choke point, a man with a bullhorn was filling the cavernous street with denunciations. Why do Democrats, he asked, love Muslims more than Christians? He said that Democrats want a society where God is replaced by individuals who have become their own gods and can therefore do anything they wish. As he said this, security closed the checkpoint. A claustrophobic feeling set in on the street as a crowd of people, blocked by the barricaded entrance to the convention, found themselves packed together between this barricade and the man shouting his contempt for them. Several people tried engage the man in debate, but we could only hear his side of the exchange—since he was the one with the bullhorn. Others turned to their cameras. Some photographed him, it seemed to me, as though he were a spectacle—a buffalo on the side of the rode at Yellowstone. Others photographed him as if to document him, to capture him with their lens and to say: I see you. The man looked into these cameras and kept on shouting.
What do you do in a moment like this? Do you stand there and try to summon silent dignity? Do you raise up a simple chant? Do you get in his face and argue? Do you walk away from this man and find someplace else to stand? Do you counter his claim that he is praying for your soul that is heading to hell with a claim that you are praying for his soul too?
A Possible Meaning of Tears
A large crowd can be both alienating and inclusive. It can feel like an anonymous assortment of isolated individuals, or like a large and unified group that one is on the outside of; one is in the crowd, but one is not of it. At other times, we can feel united with those in a crowd, that we are both in it and of it.
Standing in the packed convention hall night after night, I am willing to wager that most people there felt both ways. Singing U2’s “One” with Mary J. Blige, the people in my section of the upper deck were, indeed, as one. But there were other moments when large sections of the hall clapped or chanted “USA” and those around me sat outside of it, their hands at their sides. There were times when single people leapt up from their seats to cheer, only to find that others were not similarly moved. I found myself in this predicament on a number of occasions, rather sheepishly lowering myself back into my chair.
There was one particular moment last night when the crowd felt bound together by a chord of shared emotion, when we were all together. It was not when Obama’s speech ended, but just after it began. A quiet descended on the hall, as people strained to look at and listen to our president. I noticed that men and women next to me had tears rolling down their cheeks. Republican onlookers would no doubt say that we had “drunk the Kool-Aid,” but I think that something very different was at work here.
For those at the DNC and for many around the nation, Obama stands for hope. This hope is not to be confused with optimism. It is rather a belief that sustains the yearning for justice in a world that is often unjust. Obama represents both the possibility of our national community and the painful distance between the possible and the actual. The meaning of the tears people shed when they look upon the president is a double one: they are tears of pain at the failures and limits of our human endeavors to do better by this world, but they are also tears of joy at our ability to nourish a hope for a better world in the face of these failures and limitations. They are tears of gratefulness for our ability to work on behalf of justice, and they are tears of humility rooted in the realization that this work will never end. Not in one year, not in one presidency, not in one generation, not ever.
Michael J. Brown is a graduate student in the department of history at the University of Rochester, where he studies the place of intellectuals in American political culture. He is the founder of Flower City Philosophy, the coordinator of Rochester Educators for Obama, and a New York delegate at the DNC.
