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.

Hunting for News

(A scene from the protests at the state capitol.)

Work's been a little slow, so I decided to walk around and find some news. (Well, I actually decided to walk around and find a hamburger, but I never did.) The convention's pretty silent, so I chose to go the other way--toward the protests. The protestors weren't quite so loud as yesterday, though, so it took some hunting.

The Bomb
I struck out east, heading through the gate to the media camp, past the National Guardsmen at the end of the street, around a cordon of reclining (and yet intimidating) police drinking bottled water and eating pretzels, and out into the real world. Immediately, a man bearing a camera tripod in one hand and a cell phone in the other tore past, shouting that the bomb squad had arrived and that he "had to get this shot." I tagged along, of course.

The National Guard begged to differ. As police vehicles roared down the street, I and my fellow disaster-chasers had to poke around across the road. I never did see what the fuss was about. But they did let find whatever they were looking for, and finally let us through--to find Chris Matthews holding forth on a podium in the middle of a park.



I was crestfallen, of course, but I vowed to continue my search.

The Protest
After the bomb debacle, I walked around the perimeter of the convention zone--until I heard what sounded like drums in the distance. Where there are drums, there are protestors. I made a beeline for the sound and found myself at the state capitol, in the middle of an enormous rally. Thousands of people stood, lay, danced, chanted, or simply milled around on the lawn outside the capitol building. As I walked, I gradually became aware that my suit and my credentials set me apart from the crowd--particularly when two rather large young men asked me if I was a Republican. So I tucked my credentials inside my jacket, made my press affiliation clear by taking out my camera, and walked into the thick of the crowd.

As I walked in, a young man talked to the rallygoers in a deep baritone about the elections.



He asked them how, if they knew that John McCain and Hillary Clinton were "shapeshifting reptilian overlords", they could be sure that Obama was not, also, a shapeshifting reptilian overlord. (Because he would have shapeshifted into a white man, in case you are wondering.) He went on about Sarah Palin in a fairly offensive way; I wandered on.

At the stage in the center of the rally, a group from Iraq Veterans Against the War finished a talk. Afterward, two men came on stage and started playing music in the peace-and-unity vein: "Hello, Hello/Salaam, Salaam..." I looked around at the protestors around me. A young mother danced on the grass with her small child; a man dressed like Jesus bowed in some personal ritual; college students holding ribbons and flags pirouetted around the lawn.



(If you can't hear, the man in the background is saying, "Is the kitchen in the house?/Is the bathroom in the house?/Is the closet in the house?")

Walking Back
I'm a moderate Democrat and no protestor, but it was hard not to get caught up in the spirit of the moment. I had to return to al-Hurra, though, and so I walked south from the capitol. On the way back, two young men (not so large as the ones before) asked me who I was. I explained that I was with the press. They had seen several people at the rally in suits, and they wondered what was going on. The men seemed perfectly benign, but the next time I try to report on a rally, I'll bring a change of clothes.

A group dressed in white walked by me across a bridge. One of them started talking to a police officer, and I feared it was a protestor trying to get smart. Then they walked up to another officer, and I found out what they were saying: "Would you like some water?" They were from a Christian group called Living Water, and they were carrying sacks of bottled water. Their shirts bore the verses from John 4:13-14. They offered me water as well, but I declined.

As I entered downtown, I came across a long line standing outside a building. Protestors again? There were probably a few in the crowd, but these were ticketholders. I had stumbled upon the building where the Daily Show is being filmed. I don't know when they will start filming, but I'm sure that the folks in that line will be waiting for at least three or four hours yet. And I'd be among them, but...I had to get back to al-Hurra.