Among the Riot Police

Last evening at the convention, I had hoped to get in on the floor to see Bush and other luminaries speak. A colleague had promised to bring me the credentials I would need to pass security. But he never arrived, and so I found myself getting restless. (Those of you who have read my entire blog may be noticing a trend.)

The Guardsmen
So, around 8:00 PM, I decided to go home. I walked with my Palestinian friend northwest from the al-Hurra trailer toward his car. As we approached the fences delimiting the convention zone, I noticed that the streets were becoming barren. Suddenly, we came upon a large group of National Guardsmen working urgently on something and lining up against the fence in formation. My friend and I were the only civilians around, and so we were a little bit nervous as we walked by phalanxes of Guardsmen. The Guardsmen were clearly nervous themselves--which did nothing to help the situation.

Eventually we reached the end of the road, where a fence and a group of Guardsmen blocked the intersection. We asked one to let us through, and he told us what was happening--a group of violent protestors was planning to march down the road, and they were preparing to defend it. The soldier looked as though he'd just been called up for duty--he clearly didn't want to be there. As we talked, one soldier dropped a riot shield, and another fumbled with a nightstick. These men and women weren't professionals. They were ordinary citizens who'd been called up to defend the RNC against a group of protestors and thugs in the middle of the night, and they weren't looking forward to it. The soldier eventually let us through, but he told us that once we were on the other side, we had better run--because if we were on the protestor's side when the trouble started, the soldiers wouldn't be able to tell us apart.

My Palestinian friend took the hint and went straight for the car. But this was too interesting for your intrepid blogger to pass up, and so I set out for the city...

The Riot Police
I took a circuitous route towards downtown (to avoid walking straight through any protestors). As I walked by the state capitol, scores of young men and women walked by, going the other way. They clearly weren't protesting, but they looked as though they might have just finished. I walked toward their source, and found myself on Cedar Street entering downtown.

Anyone who decided to protest here wouldn't get far. Hundreds upon hundreds of riot police lined the streets on both sides for blocks, forming a tunnel. At some intersections, the lines curved, forcing me to walk in a snaking path through downtown. I walked for perhaps a third of a mile through the twisting tunnel, past crowds of onlookers, journalists, and people trying to get home, and eventually found myself at a dead end. Riot police covered three of the four sides of the intersection. I turned back, and found that the riot police at the previous intersection had shifted as well, routing me another way. For a while, I wandered through the changing tunnel, unable to get out. (The sound you hear in the video below is a police helicopter, one of several that constantly fly over the convention zone.)




Eventually, I learned that the danger had passed. There had been a few arrests, but nothing like the disorders of yesterday. The police were out to "catch the remaining bad guys," but their job was done. For Tuesday, at least. The protesting today should be pretty light, but expect the streets to fill on Thursday, when John McCain accepts the nomination. For the Guardsmen and the police, tonight was only a training run.