The Front Line is Everywhere – RNC 08
The GOP actually needs an army now, to make itself evident and dare celebrate anything in public. They have lied, killed, they laugh while we suffer with health problems or bemoan the loss of life and humanity. They bring their army to protect them from the voice of the People they supposedly serve.
HOME.
Wow. I began playing some of the footage I have from the rally/concert/march/police action in St. Paul, Minnesota. It feels pretty intense. It’s some of the worst camerawork I’ve probably done…I’ll have to cut out some of the Blair Witch motion. But that’s because I was making sure to get media on my Edirol (audio) as well as on the still camera and the video camera and intermittently uploading iPhone fotos AND trying not to get stomped on by horses, pepper-sprayed by freaking cops, decapitated by swinging handheld TV cameras, or trampled by sudden movements of the excitable and increasingly agitated crowd. Not every moment was dangerous, but most of the time it felt like any moment, such a moment would erupt.
The shotgun serenade of excited voices, of anti-war, anti-imperialism-themed live music, cops screaming as if they are a sticky tangle of ten evil daddies with the fury of fifty and extending pepper spray can cocked, holding long slim batons; upset spanish language anchorwoman, empassioned chanting…I had to shut it off. I don’t think I can wait days to edit at least something together, so I’ll. begin tomorrow early. Yeah. And talk about the thin line between entertainment and war, half of the crowd was media of some type (myself included) from what I could tell. It was obscene. The fear, the media, the police…the environment was one destined to bring trouble.
“Change is coming.”
—John McCain
You know I used to be on MTV’s Street Team 08. Ended up opting out, but met some good peeps there. Turns out unexpectedly, one of them was there, Charlie from Wisconsin. He spotted me just when I was rolling up on the capitol hill where the crowd was just beginning to grow in anticipation of the music and march. (There was a permit until 5pm for the gathering/concert, none for a march.) I didn’t see Charlie, I heard him behind me.
“Nez. Nez!”
and I turned around. I was dressed in my black shorts, Nike Cortez, and black rainjacket with the hood up. Canon DSLR around my neck, Panasonic DVX100B in my right hand, monopod on my hip hung from a beltloop, as did my Edirol digital audio recorder and my iPhone, which I used to snap some pictures (like the first one in this post) and was uploading regularly directly to Flickr. My left ringfinger was gashed and bleeding from where only a minute before, i had turned the wrong way and brought my video camera swinging into my finger, which was wrapped around my still camera. I was a one-man media capture unit.
I turned around.
“Hey, Charlie! What’s up, bro?”
We talked a little as we walked toward the sound. I grabbed a few words from a man in his 60s or so. He was happy but a little anxious about his home in Florida. There was a hurricane on.
I laughed as I walked away, joking with Charlie. “See that? No release form. Mmmm. Man on the street.”
“They are a pain in the ass,” he mumbled. We laughed knowingly. Then, we crossed the street. When we got to the foot of the hill, we said goodbye and good luck and all that. Parted ways.
That’s where the current took us both out to the sea of emotion and physicality that the day became. I ended up at the last minute finding a way to a bathroom which happened to be in a different area of town. That was after all the bullhorn speechifying, which I happened to love.
WE KNOW WHERE THE TERRORISTS ARE!!! Shouted the voice from the stage, addressing the crowd. Preparing us to march.THEY ARE IN THE EXCEL CENTER, GIVING SPEECHES ON TV! I guess it was like a lot of the rhetoric you’ll read on left wing blogs, actually…but this was people gathered shouting it with their voices amplified and their faces naked, rather than typing the words behind a screen. Which is why the State took it seriously.
The day was not as orderly as it may sound here. The static pictures don’t tell the whole story. Wait for the video. The energy comes through there very clearly. The sound terrain, the anxiety, passion, fear, fury. These were just moments I managed to hold everything together enough to steady myself and frame up. There’s a lot of shots that didn’t come out and footage that is just chaos.
Ended up in a different part of town after marching all the way down to the street and up to the bridge. That was after the cops were circling us with horses and four wheel vehicles, and after I read, via Twitter, that the cops were breaking out the gas masks and giving the order to disperse. (This was separate from the earlier very tense moment where I personally saw (and photographed) them put their gas masks on only feet from me, when the crowd pressed too close to them.) That was after the cops blockaded the path to the Excel center. It was also after they blocked the bridge with snowplows and dumptrucks, clustered in riot gear…choppers overhead, sirens in the air.
Sitting by myself away from the action, I really felt I was in some apocalyptic terrain. I felt like some strange kind of media soldier cut off from his unit, even though we were all basically moving around on our own.
(Thats when I ended up realizing there were people of color in St. Paul because my path out of the knot of thickening tension and violent energy took me to a bus stop where all kinds of brown and black people were. Not saying there weren’t many in the spots where convention-goers were gathering…all the McCain T-shirt hawkers in the park where I shot a few recent videos were black and admitted they were voting for Obama, and only being paid to sell McCain’s shirts.)
It was so odd sitting there with all my gear waiting for the car to zero in on me. Choppers circling and hovering above. Liza and David searching for me, but not able to reach me because of so many blocked streets. We yelled over static on our cell phones, fighting to reconnect in an area of town locked down to a few routes. Cops wouldn’t even let me cut across the grass of the field where the concert was just held. They redirected me far around, just as the police detoured Liza, David and myself out of town itself the first night we showed up to drive past the Excel center. (We never got there.)
I had to get up and walk to a part of town where they could pick me up. We immediately went out for a few drinks. And then off to eat Ethiopian. And then I fell asleep.
I’ve been wondering since how all the footage came out…and I really didn’t think I’d end up on this computer so soon. I got into shorts so I could hit the park and get some sun and just …do nothing. But I popped the tape in because I had to know if I even captured it or did something stupid like forgot to hit “Record.”
Oh, yeah, Charlie got arrested this time, not me. It was a choice. I knew at a certain point if I kept going, I’d be arrested. I have heard since that many people were let out in but a few hours…seems it was not like my stint in 2004, where days went by before we breathed outside air again. If I didn’t have mijita here and a plane to catch in the morning, I would have pressed all the way in. Jail or no.
Many people in the area I heard from said “the protestors deserved it.” Completely overlooked the atmosphere created by the GOP with their paramilitary procession. Or refused to address the validity of outrage to such events that have become normalized in the last 8 years. Blamed gente reacting to so many wrongs with visceral and immediate outrage for that which was causing the outrage.
This is what spurred some of the anger in my last post. But it’s a prevailing message online, too. This gradual obsoleting and demeaning of genuine physical and emotional reaction, this sneering at protest.
This worries me. I can’t believe it doesn’t worry everyone. You do see what is happening, right?
I got no patience, now. So sick of complacence, now.
—Rage Against the Machine
Obviously we’re way past the “no standing armies” thing. But this is not normal nor acceptable. Did I mention the National Guard was also guarding the Excel building? The National Guard??? Protecting a political convention??
I mean what is going on here. Did we not begin with revolution? And refusal to be subjects? Sure, that was one end of the continuum, but…wow. Somehow, we are now to the point where one day we basically go on with life without much of a hitch, most of us, even knowing our government has blatantly lied us into murdering over a million people (or oKAY it was OOOONLY SIXHUNDREDTHOUSAND whatev), mainstreamed torture, used the entire DOJ as their war room, gutted Iraq for corporate and military interests/profit, admit they spy on all our communications and store up that private information…and ON AND ON AND ON—and we curse and snarl at protestors?
Ay Dios Mio.
The GOP actually needs an army now, to make itself evident and dare celebrate anything in public. They have lied, killed, they laugh while we suffer with health problems or bemoan the loss of life and humanity. They bring their army to protect them from the voice of the People they supposedly serve.
Chale. I am not sorry that I refuse to cheer for that army. I refuse to belittle those with enough heart to throw themselves at the symbols of encroaching police state and behind them, those who are responsible for all this hell and horror that our nation has entangled itself in and has unleashed upon other nations and thus, is becoming, morally and actually.
If I’m wrong, I’ll be happy. I just don’t think this is going to go away. I think as class divisions increase and resources become more scarce and the elitist politicians and CEOs and related kinds horde more treasure and starve the rest of both food, honest government, and truth, they will need more and more force to keep the illusion of a fair society in place.
Like I said, I hope I’m wrong. But I was there in both Denver and in St. Paul. And as most of you know, I was also arrested in 2004 for protesting the GOP. It’s been four years and now this behavior surrounds both major parties’ conventions (though far worse at the GOP’s, granted) and as far as I can see, is only increasing in intensity.
Tags: Republican, RNC, RNC 1800
Posted in Citizen Journalism, Criminal Justice System, Culture of Criminality, ICE, MTV, Media, Police, Police State, Politics, Race for 2008, Republicans, United States Politics
It’s really important to me that you will be adding your photos and your video and your words to the story that they are trying to keep people from seeing. I heard the mayor of St Paul on the radio this morning, lying his ass off about how all the people arrested “must have done something” and then right after him the lawyer Bruce Nestor trying so hard to communicate that what happened during this week was wrong, unacceptable, un-fucking-American. OK, so he was politer, but I feel as if there are the people who see and the people who refuse to see what is right under their fucking noses. 60,000 signatures from all over the country, from journalists, were delivered to the mayor calling for the release and dropping of charges against all the media folks who were arrested (and what about the folks who were just trapped between the river, the horses, the dumptrucks and the pepper spray)? Me? I stayed away because I have a kid to take care of, but also because I was scared. Mission accomplished.
There must be some form of resistance that is more effective than sopping up pepper spray. I’m not sure what it might be, but I would like to hear what you have to say about it. My answer was to leave the country and never return. I still don’t have a better answer and that was 30 years ago when I left. I left because I decided to do that, not because I was pressed to. There was no police or state action pending against me. It was 1979 and I didn’t see the pattern as one that would change soon, so I chose another life. It’s a Kung Fu thing, you know, it’s hard to use moves against firearms.
Haven’t you ever seen the footage of the Chicago Riots that led to the Chicago 8 {7} trial?
I can’t see that much has changed except in scale and much better police organization and equipment.
I study advanced levels of economics now. Simply, if the immigrants no longer come to the US, and the working class and middle class leave and go somewhere else, that’s the end.
I guess the idea of everyone just refusing to participate is kind of unusual, but that is my path.
What are the other paths? Thanks for attending the conventions {at least the periphery} Nez, and I hope over time you develop some plans for real Change, not just sloganeering Change.
Again, I await your thoughts. I’m way past the point of cynicism {I got there by 1968} and for decades have wondered just how the US would develop. The Clinton years showed some promise, but we are so far behind now that I am again considering leaving the island colony I live on and getting even further away from the US. I’m almost done paying current debts and further savings will go toward an extra citizenship. It’s later than I thought.
[...] photo credit to nezua « in our dear saint paul | [...]
and the Bare Truth Of It All, exposed in one sentence:
“I think as class divisions increase and resources become more scarce and the elitist politicians and CEOs and related kinds horde more treasure and starve the rest of both food, honest government, and truth, they will need more and more force to keep the illusion of a fair society in place.”
Is there a way to be ready for this? Is there, really?
I am ashamed of my city. I cannot tolerate the rationalizations that I’m hearing. And I think about how all that militarization will not just leave us now but will be felt by the people here on a day-to-day basis.
On the other hand, I wish you rest and restoration Nezua. We certainly have alot of work to do!
Joanna, you said it. Thank you for supporting what I’m doing. I have a little more to tell. Just need to space it out a bit, as I’m still recovering from the whole trip.
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RC i do not think this is necessarly the most productive resistance. but it is resistance, at least. and so i do applaud it. i cannot speak for each individual isolated incident, as i have not been present for them. but in general. to your point, yes. better is thoughtful strategy on how to advance the interests of the People and fight the rot of culture and society, which is increasingly more coopted and drained for power and resource by the fatcats on top.
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good question, cmcneill. i’m thinking on it, have been for a while.
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gracias, NL. hope your town mellows a bit, at least from the past episode. too much. be well
Wow I didn’t know Charlie got arrested. Crazy.
Pictures are great (and, although this is OT, many are also pretty, and make me want to go to MLPS!).
i’ll post a few soon that are not police or rally related, cero. i have at least a few that i took just of scenery. gracias.
Nez:
Great work, as always.
I think you are right about the culture of Cop on Citizen violence taking place at both the DNC and GOP conventions. However, I think that the dems have little or nothing to say about how it comes down, since DHS and the FBI are not acting on their requests, but the GOP’s in both instances. It makes the dems looks as bad as possible at no real cost to the GOP.
It is becoming very difficult to trust any police or political organization that’s in a position of power (or one that wants to be).
Slightly ot, but…
Well, since the GOP’s commissars don’t give a shit what their own rank and file thinks, it will be a cold day in hell when rivers run uphill and pigs fly out of Bill Hobbes’ ass before they care what ANY democrat thinks.
Please push this link, everywhere.
It’s been suggested that this link:
http://therealmccain.com/butler/
be pushed to every one. Thank you for your kind indulgence.
democommie
I love hearing your account and was waiting for it to come up, but Nez, it is so strange for me to see you repeatedly refer to areas outside of downtown as “out of town.” I keep having this urge to sweep past-you up and give you a tour of the fun things to do in whatever part of town you just got shoved to.
Glad you had Ethiopian–it’s yummy, and widely available here.
It made me feel like at least you came close to doing one of the things I would’ve recommended doing in the parts of town you got shoved to.
(By the way, I suspect you ended up, your 2nd time being pushed out of downtown, right in the area where I was going around earlier this year petitioning against a light rail path. Which is how I feel like I know it now.)
you are on the money: i used the word “town” very very loosely! sorry! really i was referring to a very small area, but you know that. i hope i didnt seem at any time as if i was presenting myself as if i know the area! i don’t. not a bit.
good to see ya here! thanks, katie.
No need to apologize–as you said, I knew what you meant.
And it was more that you didn’t know the area but had such overwhelming feelings that made me wish I could’ve lent you some of my knowledge.
my feelings would not have been ameliorated with any knowledge. they were a result of what i was experiencing.
and honestly, i didnt have any more time to do sightseeing or foodeating than i did…making video on location is very time intensive as you can imagine. plus, i was gathering many different kinds of media. i missed out on at least four invites in each city i did this…just no more time. so dont feel bad about not giving me recommends, etc. tho i appreciate the thought katie.
wow…honors to you our friend, your efforts applauded…sounds like you could have used an assistant?
a military trained police force in front of our noses, again. it is partly the increasingly manufactured need for an average citizen to simply survive another day – exhausting the body, mind, and spirit – that purposely creates the intended complacency, to best divide the interest that would otherwise unify to make effective the difference required for change. we do see the hog shit wallowed in. no manner of delivery, or method for oder cover up, will keep the stink from reaching us all. people just don’t always know where the smell comes from. thank you for looking for (and finding) the source and helping for us to see. “only by seeing can a man of knowledge know”. (-don juan from carlos castanenda. either the teachings of don jaun, or journey to ixlan. i apologize for my misspellings but i think i got the quote right.) because of the softer nature of the protest, it seems the actions taken by the “riot” police could maybe be practice for a more serious “deployment”. another opportunity for gaining information on the reaction of pavlo’s dogs?
thanx for staying true, keeping with your intuitive, nezua.
rc-when you find shangra-la, let us know. we all need a place to go.
Sweetleaf, the new idea amongst escapees is to not publicize the place escaped to. I’m not sure what I would do if I found the perfect place, but I have plenty of friends actively traveling and looking as we speak. You find a place and it’s great, but over time {30 years} things change.
I think that Cuba could turn out to be great for a lot of reasons, but in the interim, there continues to be the Raul problem, so read Generacion Y {blog} to keep up on that. Also the Republica Dominicana is getting better and better
say my contacts there, I will be investigating closely soon. Within various countries there are different places, climates and attitudes, so the town you choose is important.
More than that, who you are and who you decide to become is everything. You can’t escape yourself, you’ll just find a new address for the problem.
Other friends like Argentina right now. Others are investigating the South Pacific Islands, but they won’t reveal details, they don’t want company. I live in Vieques, Puerto Rico. Not a perfect place, but remote and ignored enough for my needs right now. It will serve very well as an outpost should the major governments fail as primitive living is very possible here.
But, ultimately, I think within 10 years I will be living on the mountainside above Santiago de Cuba at about the 3000 foot level.
Happy Trails!
rc – amen to the fact, where ever i go there i am. i also realized as i asked of sacred places, there is the reason they are so, and reason to keep them that way. kind of like a hot fishing spot, maybe? thank you for expanding my mental horizons. when reading your previous post, i appreciated that you had the foresight and especially the initiative to get outta dodge.
my friend thinks cuba is a great idea, and i will check out generacion y to keep updated, thanx. i was daydreaming about snowboarding in argentina last winter (i’ve snowboarded twice in my living). republica dominicana, south pacific islands, you in puerto rico, to be on the mountainside in cuba…nice. sounds like you have good friends rc, which means you probably are one yourself. nice to be connected to the first hand. remote and ignored sounds wonderful. primitive living is the meek will inherit…it makes sense. that will be the option.
thank you for getting back to me on this. i smile as i wish happy trails to you too.
just as a note, i know i have to change my bad habit of lower case only, makes me hard to read. sorry.
Even Al Giordano is following the secret location mode now. He has been an expat for a long time too — he says mostly for economic reasons, which are good reasons.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/where-should-the-field-go-report-voter-registration-deadline
At that post note that he doesn’t live in the US, is very attuned to US politics anyway and he does not refer to his actual primary residence — he doesn’t name the town.
I think I have read the town elsewhere, but now that Al is becoming extremely popular, perhaps he has decided to not mention the location anymore.
There are a great number of us that continue to have some remote hope for the US Constitution being rehabilitated and the corporate/politico complex being cut down to size in Washington.
So we read and write blogs from afar. Quite a few ex-pats write about US politics, but I don’t and probably won’t. I realized decades ago that I had been out of the country for far too long
and I just didn’t understand the place any more.
My sense, confirmed during a visit in 2005, is that the frog in a pot situation was long ago applied to the US public. Slowly, slowly, the citizen frog was heated and now is boiling, but is none the wiser.
I used to say to people, jump before it is too late! Now, I think it is already far too late.
all the reasons are sound for the exodus…i too am one who lives out a hope in the potential of possibility here (constitutionally or whatever will make sense)…. at this time, i am off to my 9-4 because i have to. all could be worse for me, as i know it is for others, so am grateful for what i got – (yes, this thinking does keep me passive, but it is thinking i have to do for now and even for the long run). i think there is wisdom existing, only it is the inability to combine and strengthen in the numbers necessary (and that may result in the extinction of us). maybe a collective consciousness will prevail and manifest a destiny of reason, possibly with purpose? you, al, nezua, others here, and around this sphere are hope that matters? i dunno… i gotta get to quizno’s, it’s a matter of discipline of self. later and forever peace.
I’m a dropout from the US. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t wish the citizens and the Constitution well. It just means I could see where it was going for me, and not wanting to share the fate of the Weathermen or the Panthers I forfeited the game.
I really do not think my example is the best. I greatly admire those {perhaps like Obama} who wish to stay, put up with the incredible abuse of invasion of privacy, being an object of hate, fighting to help people who would bite their noses to spite their faces, and bite your nose too, and in general, fight to the top of the heap in order to be the King of the Dunghill that is the US political and economic system at present.
Obama was right long ago, and I hope he gets elected and is a severe iconoclast. A change has to come in many ways. But from 1963 to 1979, I never saw how that could be accomplished without lots of bloodshed {there was bloodshed, but it wasn’t massive}so I left in late 1979.
That’s my story, and I do not consider it a happy one. My personal lesson as a US citizen is simple. If you are a fully conscious person, the political realities in the US are enraging on a daily basis. I couldn’t live like that. Yet, I will quickly admit that I still see no answers and I think it is quite possible that McCain will win the election, after all, past IS prologue in many cases. So when the Republicans get in, if you are getting out, go fast, and get another citizenship, because the new trend is asset confiscation for those that want to leave. You can look it up.
[...] of The Unapologetic Mexican The Front Line is Everywhere – RNC 08: The GOP actually needs an army now, to make itself evident and dare celebrate anything in public. [...]
sweetleaf, thanks so much. just wanted to stop in quick to thank you for your comments over the last week. i’m really running around a lot now so i dont have enough time to replying in depth as everyone deserves, but wanted you to know i appreciate the engagement.
-n-, you are so welcome and thank you for a place to go, so i can make my attempt to reacquaint with like understandings. i have been absent for a few days and am glad to see you are back. you were missed, but only physically not spiritually. i felt your conscience at work. that’s cool stuff.
(rc) -my ability to go anywhere is restricted, to leave the country not an option now, and a challenge under the best of my circumstances. i am grateful to you who can, with the vision to see what is as is. i feel rc’s prophetic words as a truth. it will be the will/way scenario for me, to venture forth, however that may manifest for me.
for now i’m off to the new reads you have given to us nezua. i’ll always see you there. thanx.
It’s interesting reading your take on the GOP convention because from home the media seemed to have casually glossed over the protests meanwhile focusing more of their time and attention on John McCain’s v.p. choice.
democommie, want you to know “mcinsane”, “grampy mcgeritol”, video is being passed on. thanx. (not my nature to call names but thought i’d try it out, for the feel.)