I’ve actually been in Denver more than 48 hours, but have had some Internet connectivity issues that seem to be resolved now. Most of the delegations and media flew in today, and tomorrow (Sunday) is when things really start to get interesting — starting with the first of the major protests, an anti-war march and protest that begins at 9 AM local time, steps off (after the interminable speeches) from the State Capitol at noon, and then winds through downtown Denver to the Pepsi Center.
There’s a lot of paranoia in local anti-war circles about how the police will react to even this and the other permitted rallies and marches scheduled each day through Thursday. (Sunday’s anti-war march and Thursday’s immigrant march are expected to be the largest.) One long-time local organizer with DPD (Denver Police Dept.) ties says the word going out to cops is to respect the marchers — until something, anything, goes wrong (as it inevitably will with tens of thousands of marchers, including, no doubt, some provocateurs). At that point, the instructions are supposedly to rely on rubber bullets rather than tear gas. I guess bullets don’t show up as well on teevee.
We’ll see if that’s accurate or not — rumors are always rampant before events of this type. But just driving by the convention site, the security preparations look like Denver’s very own Green Zone. And nobody seems to know where, in the maze of tents and cordoned-off areas, the “J Lot” — aka the “Freedom Zone,” aka “Gitmo on the Platte” — is actually located. Cute. If protesters can’t find the “legal” place to protest, by definition it’s an illegal protest. Not that the city-issued permits mean much; as veterans of other such events can attest, such permits can and often are trumped by one poorly-announced Order to Disperse by law enforcement.
At least we live in a free country, right?
In any event, it should be interesting. I’ll be there with cameras & recorder, and will pass on what I see Sunday afternoon.
Anti-war protesters are the only ones I’ve talked with so far who are dismayed at all by the Biden VP pick, not just because of his record on the war and his oft-stated desire to partition Iraq, but because his membership in good standing in DC’s bipartisan foreign policy consensus — the one that naturally assumes America has a right to a global empire — seems so sharply at odds with Obama’s once-upon-a-time promise to rethink America’s entire foreign policy paradigm. Otherwise, though, the reaction seems generally positive among progressives here — not because folks are especially enamored of Biden, but because he’s a good fit as a campaigner and (with that same foreign policy experience) in the election, and because it could have been a lot worse (e.g., almost anyone from the DLC/Clinton camps).
The flip side — expressed by one activist I talked with today who supports Obama but isn’t in Denver — is dismay that Obama selected “just another politician.” This is going to be a tricky balance for Obama in coming months: continuing to stoke the energy of the many, many people new to presidential politics who’ve been inspired by Obama as someone “different,” while communicating to the rest of the electorate that he’s not so different that he’s a risky choice. And we’ve already seen that the McCain campaign will be going right after that perception, expressed in a thousand not-very-subtle ways, that Obama is “too different.” From that standpoint, Biden was a smart pick.
More later, and throughout the week.
