My first day on the job! Which, due to Hurricane Gustav, consisted of sitting around all day waiting for anything to happen. All the big events were canceled for the day on John McCain's orders. The upshot is that I had plenty of free time to poke around and take photos.
I spent my morning sitting in the al-Hurra media trailer, watching coverage of Gustav and waiting for someone to give me something to do. Gradually, I realized this wasn't going to happen, and so I decided to look around. The first thing I found? Protestors. (I apologize for the size of the video--I don't have any editing software.)
Police estimate that almost 10,000 protestors showed up today. The protest march you see here went on for a long time--I watched this scene for about ten minutes, and never saw the end. Apparently, a separate protest group attempted to overrun riot police. An officer nearly maced a fellow student of mine reporting on the scene.
The floor of the convention wasn't quite so exciting. I managed to get in just as the convention began, and sat through a number of votes on procedural matters. That didn't bother me, though--the arena is spectacular, as you can see from the photo at the top of this post. At one point, a very nice gentleman sat next to me and struck up a conversation. He turned out to be an alternate delegate from Virginia, and asked me about myself. An awkward situation--I was loathe to reveal that I was not in fact a loyal Republican. Fortunately, he never asked me anything that forced me to disclose my affiliation, and we had a very friendly chat.
The schedule for the rest of the week is still up in the air, but I'm inclined to believe that the RNC will be back on track tomorrow. Gustav seems to have done less damage than expected, and the Republicans are certainly eager to make use of the enormous monetary investment in the convention. (To say nothing of the Twin Cities business community, which has been watching Gustav as though the hurricane were coming straight for them.) I'll let you know what's going on tomorrow.
(An outlying encampment of the media fortress across from the Xcel Center.)
Yesterday, I received a call from my employer at the RNC next week, al-Hurra. Who? That's what I asked when I learned two months ago that I would be working for them. al-Hurra is a (United States) government-run organization that broadcasts news and other programming on television and radio in the Middle East, much like Voice of America. (Not exactly what I had expected when I signed up.) The man who called me invited me to come down to the Xcel Center and tour their operation before the convention began.
So I went down, and (of course) he was out to lunch. But once he got back, he showed me around. al-Hurra, he explained, is meant to be a pro-American counter to Al-Jazeera, the Arabic news station. Al-Jazeera has a relatively large news staff at the conventions this year, and is trusted much more than al-Hurra (seen as a Western tool in the Middle East), but the folks over there still believe they can compete. What exactly I will be doing for them, I don't know--I don't speak Arabic. I suspect I'm going to be an errand boy. But I will be an errand boy on the floor of the convention!
While I'm on the topic of media, let me discuss the media zone, or perhaps small country, outside the Xcel Center. It occupies half a city block, a fenced-in bubble filled with busy-looking men striding around with their Blackberries to their ears. Most news outlets--from CNN down to al-Hurra--have a tent or a trailer in there. It's as though an occupying force has arrived. When you step through the gates, you are no longer in St. Paul. You are in the Media Cocoon. I'll be spending plenty of time there in the coming days.
Well, I promised you photos of the Xcel Center, but the Secret Service disagreed. I was not allowed to take photos--they don't want potential troublemakers to know about the layout in advance. But I took plenty of shots of the outside:
The Xcel Center, I learned, is a converted hockey stadium. You'd never know to see it--the Republicans have, in the space of a month, completely converted it. A giant TV screen--the second-largest HDTV in the world, after the one at the Beijing Olympics--and the podium in front of it dominate the arena. The delegates sit on the floor of the hockey rink (without ice, of course), surrounded by thickly carpeted walkways, so that they have to descend into the seating area. We watched while the media crew for the Republicans tested their cameras and fast-forwarded through video backdrops on the TV screen. The convention hall is a sight to behold--and I will be uploading photos and video once the convention starts next Monday.
At the seminar, we heard from former Oklahoma congressman Mickey Edwards, our politician-in-residence. Edwards was a member of the Republican leadership during his time in Congress, before he became involved in a banking scandal and was voted out. Now, needless to say, most of the students at our seminar are dyed-in-the-wool Republicans, and I expected Edwards to throw them some red meat. But he hasn't. He's been quite forthright in his condemnation of President Bush's administration--though he agrees with Bush politically, he believes Bush has crossed too many lines, both legal and political. This morning, the room suddenly just tore into him, because they believed he was too liberal. A room full of diehard Republicans lighting into a respected conservative intellectual for being too liberal...a worrisome sign for a Democrat in their midst. But it's just what I signed up for.
My first day on the job! Which, due to Hurricane Gustav, consisted of sitting around all day waiting for anything to happen. All the big events were canceled for the day on John McCain's orders. The upshot is that I had plenty of free time to poke around and take photos.
