Still, as I flip through the tattered file folders in my brain, I realize what I saw those four days in St. Paul left me with a certain amount of anxiety about how thin and fragile the ropes are that keep the U.S. Constitution from flapping around in the wind. And that conclusion doesn’t just come from the actions of the legions of officers in Robocop-inspired costumes carrying truncheons. It’s also from a total lack of perspective displayed by everyone involved—from the misguided college student trying to get close enough to the convention delegates to deploy a backpack full of feces, to the silk-suited talk show hosts who fill hours upon hours of otherwise precious television time with a verbal form of excrement in an effort to dehumanize people they disagree with. It’s no wonder some young people reach the conclusion that the only thing that matters at these political events boils down to shattering store windows and slashing police car tires.
I am, by nature, a devout abider of laws. When the pedestrian signal says “Don’t Walk,” I stay on the curb. I don’t litter or sneak grapes at the grocery store. I don’t butt in line. If I happen to be at a traffic signal at 3:30 in the morning with no other cars in sight, I’ll wait for the light to turn green. By and large, I believe certain basic rules are part of the social infrastructure and my observance of them helps make civil society run just a little bit smoother. None of this mattered, unfortunately, on the last night of the convention while I was kneeling on the damp ground in my best, pressed slacks with my hands on my head with a couple dozen armored, masked cops pointing various weapons—non-lethal and otherwise—in my direction yelling “Stay down!” and “Shut the fuck up!” At this point, I was acutely aware that my individual offerings to the gods of civil society didn’t amount to much. My arrest had less to do with any threat I posed to public safety and more to do with crossing paths with a massive, mobilized police force with $50-million dollars to spend; shoot now and let the courts deal with the lack of evidence.
Let me also say I believe party conventions are obsolete. I’m certainly not the first to come to that conclusion. I enjoy the national focus on the political process. I’ve watched all the major convention speeches since Gerald Ford (I still have the photo I took of my TV screen with my already ancient Brownie camera of Ford speaking at the 1976 Republican convention). I was in the United Center in Chicago when Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Al Gore addressed the delegates. I liked watching Sarah Palin appear in St. Paul. I would have liked seeing John McCain speak, had I not been sitting on a curb on Marion Street with my hands flexi-cuffed behind my back. But the conventions have become less about showing sausage being made and more about making people think their brand of detergent gets whites whiter and colors more colorful.
Imagine just for a moment if all that money—hundreds of millions of dollars—and media manipulation and overblown security measures instead went into truly engaging the public and instilling citizens with knowledge and patriotism, instead of fear and distrust. Each side insists their approach to policy is the only way to avoid the apocalypse when really it’s only incrementally different than their opponent’s. That’s what occurred to me as I was forced to sit silently with my throat still convulsing from the ambient remnants of pepper spray and my ears ringing from the barrage of flash-bang bombs that destroyed the peace of my capitol city.
During the convention and since, every side used exaggeration combined with righteous indignation to maintain their own comfortable delusion at the expense of real discourse. I was shocked when I heard police arrested Democracy Now host Amy Goodman Then I saw the video of the interaction. Police gave her every opportunity to go free but it was clear she was compelled to cross the line to show solidarity with her detained colleagues (whose arrests I still think were questionable). I was equally shocked the night I got arrested when an officer told me they found a gun on one of the other people being detained. It was a charge St. Paul Assistant Police Chief Matt Bostrom repeated three weeks later at a forum I helped organize. The officers chose to share that information as a way to convey the seriousness of their jobs. Then I learned that the gun belonged to a journalist with a permit. If it was such a threat, why didn’t the police file charges against the gun’s owner?
That’s not to say each doesn’t have a point. Journalists and protesters and ordinary citizens endured arbitrary and sometimes brutal overreaction from police. Those whose oath is to serve and protect faced serious threats to themselves and the general public they could not dismiss. Still—now a year later--to try and stick with the same false justifications for over-the-top actions only lessens the public’s faith in the official description of anything. For once I’d like to hear somebody say, “I didn’t do that quite right and I hope next time—with other people’s guidance--I can figure out a better way.” If we’re going to continue to have these week-long political party infomercials, we are going to have to find a way—logistically—to rightfully broaden the scope of discussion.
And it doesn’t just have to be a convention. Instead of learning from our failures at constructive political dialogue, we seem to have learned how to keep from having a dialogue at all. I’d be up in arms, too, if I believed--as the disrupters of Congressional town hall forums do--that health care in the government’s hands will bankrupt the country and lead to a cabal of bureaucrats who decide which grandmother is more deserving of blood pressure medicine. But some of those disrupters have legitimate questions: why does health reform seem to be on some kind of fast track? Who is pulling the strings? If the legislation has unintended consequences, is there a way to back out of it? Is it really better for the government to administer something so important—the health of the nation’s citizens—or is the current system the best we can hope for?
But it’s not enough to just ask the questions. You have to wait to hear the answers. If you don’t, you’re no better, ideologically, than the leather-clad punks who pull up street signs and shove them into department store windows before running off. Their purpose is disruption for the sake of itself. They know what they believe and they’re not going to expose themselves to anything that might change their minds.
I’m not so confident in my memory of the minute-by-minute actions a year ago that led to my arrest to say I didn’t have it coming. I was in a confusing situation in close proximity to people intent on breaking the law. As a journalist, I realized I might get caught up in the net. In short, I didn’t do that quite right and I hope next time--with other people’s guidance--I can figure out a better way. I’m also aware, however, that unless others are receptive to the same self-reflection, that I’ll come off as an idealistic sucker, handcuffed on the ground, waiting to get hauled downtown.
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