Elephants' Graveyard
For the last year and a half or so, I've contemplated the arrival of the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City with feelings of outrage, dread, and revulsion. I spent time last summer drawing up my dream "Counter-Convention" which would range from Jane Jacobs giving a keynote on how Republican policies are destroying American cities to a Central Park concert featuring Sleater-Kinney and Bruce Springsteen. Mostly, the mere thought that they were coming here to celebrate the "moral clarity" Bush Administration almost literally atop the bodies of our 9/11 dead seemed almost incomprehensible.

One evening last August, I attended a planning meeting of one of the groups gearing up to protest the convention, about a ten-minute walk from my apartment in Brooklyn. In sum, it was a trip to lefty fantasyland that, much as I'm still appalled and outraged at the Republicans' gall in coming here, and still planning to protest, I haven't yet been willing to repeat. Among the first orders of business at this meeting was to kick out a New York Times reporter who had come to check out the proceedings; my protest that this was a damn good way to alienate the media and re-confirm all sorts of stereotypes about the fringe left was quickly brushed aside. They then went on to establish that the planning group for the protest would be anti-racist, anti-homophobic, a "safe space" for transsexuals... all laudable sentiments, but it wasn't exactly like Bull Connor or Jerry Falwell were in the room trying to persecute anyone. I repeatedly tried to steer the conversation to how our protests could serve the larger goal: denying Bush a second term with which to ruin the country, mostly to no avail.

I left very worried that these idealistic people, who had disdained the political process for so long, would play right into the hands of cynical Republican operatives and lazy journalists who'd be more than happy to caricature them as "the America-hating left." My ideal protest would prominently feature veterans, little old ladies, African-American church groups and a sea of those little American flags; we're probably more likely to get the puppets, obscene signs and screaming white college-age women with lots of piercings. The city's refusal thus far to accommodate protesters with a Central Park site seems likely to raise the level of confrontation; my nightmare is that we'll see a reprise of Chicago 1968; it's not primarily the NYPD that worries me, but the Secret Service, who are in charge of security but have remained mum about their plans.

As a policy geek, the argument I'd really like to make centers on just how destructive Bush policies have been to New York City. The current Gotham Gazette gets into some of this, and offers a good overview of some of the issues that have come up for both the city and the Republicans... though the funniest piece of this news package is the "equal time" article attempting to make the case that NYC is in fact a great site for a Republican convention. The author, who has served in state government for nearly a half-century, still has to go back to the days of TR and La Guardia to find any relevant Republican heroes for the city.